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Pilots Strike at Cargo Carrier Serving DHL, Amazon.com
- 6stringmerc 10y agoIn a way the title is almost misleading - not the fault of most articles though - because the carrier is attempting to use the US Court System to block the pilots going on strike. So, while yes they may "go on Strike" it's part of a longer process. Personally I know which entity I'm pulling for, so long-term I'll have to file away the result as educational no matter which side gets their way.
- Johnny555 10y agoThe text of the linked article seems to match the headline... the article says that the strike is in-progress and planes are grounded: The pilots are picketing ABX Air, a subsidiary of Air Transport Services Group Inc., and aren’t flying scheduled routes, the union said Tuesday. ATSG has 58 freighter aircraft in its fleet, including 50 widebody Boeing 767 planes. Pilots aren’t crossing the picket lines, which means planes are unable to leave an Amazon hub in Wilmington, Ohio, and a DHL hub in Cincinnati, said a person familiar with the matter. The carrier said they are seeking a court order to end the work stoppage, but it hasn't been granted yet and it's not at all clear that it will be (at least, not according to the article): Air Transport Services Group said it is trying to end what it calls an illegal work stoppage. ABX Air President John Starkovich said the airline is seeking a court order to force the pilots back to work.
- vkou 10y ago> ABX Air President John Starkovich said the airline is seeking a court order to force the pilots back to work. How are these kinds of court orders possible in a free country, with largely at-will employment? Employees are not slaves.
- astronautjones 10y agoReagan famously set this precedent
- rgbrenner 10y agoActually it's the Railway Labor Act of 1926. So before Reagan's time. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Labor_Act
- rgbrenner 10y agoBasically the idea is rail (and later airlines) are critical national infrastructure, and the country should not be brought to a standstill over minor contract disputes. Before the law, here's what would happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877 So the law requires minor disputes to be resolved through arbitration or mediation, instead of with a strike. ABX is saying this is a minor dispute, the union says it's a major dispute. The judge agreed with the union. Even if the employees were forced back to work, they can still quit. So there's no slavery here.
- vkou 10y agoSo, strike-busting used to be enforced through murder - now it is enforced through the courts. Wouldn't it seem that the obvious solution to the problem consist of handing out hemp neckties to the people orchestrating, and perpetrating the violence.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 10y agoIMHO, if the courts are being used to break the strike they should also be used to arbitrate the dispute and make the resolution binding. Make it dangerous to try to use the government to prosecute your own labor relations problem because they could find in favor of the unions and force you to honor time off promises or raise pay or whatever it is the union is striking over. And of course if the union is the one being unreasonable then we have today's situation where the workers are told to get back to work and the Union is told to pound sand.
- rgbrenner 10y agoWSJ has no details on why the strike happened, says an "unspecified" number of flights for Amazon (actually 35/day) and even seems out of date.. since the court order ABX attempted to get was already dismissed. Each of the pilots has worked an average of 32 emergency days so far this year (days they would have had off). In just the first 3 months of this year, 40% of captains exceeded their emergency work days.. so it's possible there are no captains or first officers on ABXs payroll with emergency work days remaining. ABX says this is a minor contractual dispute, so they should be forced back to work (along with more emergency days) and it should be resolved through arbitration/mediation. The judge didn't agree. And the issue has been ongoing for a year and half. This article has more detail: http://aviationtribune.com/airlines/north-america/pilots-strike-abx-air/ http://aviationtribune.com/airlines/north-america/pilots-str...
- logfromblammo 10y agoApparently, the pilots' contract says that flight time scheduled on an emergency basis is supposed to be repaid with compensatory time off. Clearly, from the sheer amount of emergency scheduling, the company simply does not employ enough pilots to honor all of its contract obligations. ABX needs to immediately expand its permanent pilot workforce by about 15%, and still hire additional temporary contractors to get through the end-year holiday season.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoBut that'd cost money and eat into profits /s EDIT: I don't care who you are, abusing labor for profits is not morally acceptable.
- jdavis703 10y agoI don't know the full situation (and definitely didn't downvoted you), but just because they were working "emergency hours" doesn't mean they were being abused. Workplace abuse is things like harassment, physical intimidation, etc.
- scoot 10y agoI so misinterpreted that headline - for a moment I though military aircraft had attacked a cargo ship!
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- guard-of-terra 10y agoThis is not /b/.
- serge2k 10y agoOh right we need "substantive comments". How about "Not every damn problem in the world is solved by liberal applications of blockchains and ML".
- bertiewhykovich 10y agoI've developed an algorithm that significantly improves any concept. The creativity barrier has been broken by my might -- the line between computers and humans shattered. The source code is below: its elegance is staggering. def improve_idea(idea_description): return '%s Also blockchain.' % idea_description
- guard-of-terra 10y agoThere's perhaps a dozen ways to solve this particular problem and, come to think of that, you didn't apply a single one.
- sctb 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018721 and marked it off-topic.
- more_corn 10y agoPlease stop posting paywalled articles. There are all kinds of arguments for paying for quality news and whatever, but I'll never pay for WSJ and I simply don't care enough to bother with circumvention. If people want to try the paywall thing let them build the wall. Lets stop peeking over the top though shall we?
- ksk 10y agoI kind of agree with you but I am not sure of the principle at play here. Because I wonder how that would apply if we gave equal status to all outputs of human labor. For e.g. You need to spend money to buy a macbook, so why link to a review? Or you need to buy a book to read it, so why should comments be able to link to a book? etc etc. OTOH we could simply downvote and move on? :)
- cypherpunks01 10y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 I do wish that paywall articles could be tagged as such though.
- yohoho22 10y agoMaybe if there was a little more encouragement of non-paywalled submissions, where possible? Here's a Bloomberg article that seems to cover mostly the same ground as this WSJ piece, for example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/pilot-strike-could-hurt-amazon-s-air-operation-during-holidays https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/pilot-str... Sometimes the WSJ or NYT or whoever just has something to offer that others do not. In many cases, though, it seems like there's other paywall-free reporting that could work basically as well.
- ams6110 10y agoHere's the story from another source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-air-transport-sr-strike-idUSKBN13H2HC http://www.reuters.com/article/us-air-transport-sr-strike-id...
- throwaway_xx9 10y agoFYI: In response to the ColganAir accident, the FAA raised training experience to 1,500 hours from about 250 hours. That means there's no qualified entry-level pilots, which is the whole point of regional airlines (cheap, non-union pilots.) So what ABX is doing is trying to make their existing pilots cover the shortfall, instead of financing new pilots to work there. It's all about the Benjamins.