Unfortunately they do treat their employees better

Any one who comes to my door & I'm not expecting you will receive a nice surprise:D

Spoken like management ;)

A perspective from the customer...

You and your union will be the ruination of Delta as you care not about the customers, only yourselves. What I have seen post-merger is a clearly visible difference in service excellence between the DL and NW crews and I for one am sick of it.


EXAMPLE #1: During multiple flights with NW crews, the FAs can been seen texting on their cell phones, placing phone calls and failing to acknowledge passengers during boarding.

EXAMPLE #2: I have listened time and time again to NW FAs sit in the galley area and badmouth the airline in earshot of the pax. You know what? I don't care about your problems. Be happy you have a freaking job in this economy.

EXAMPLE #3: I have witnessed (more than once) NW GAs and FAs get into verbal altercations on the jet bridge over "policy"

EXAMPLE #4: I have witnessed GAs abandon the podium for up to 20 minutes to the point that the crew had to print their own manifest and the GA had no idea the crew had boarded the aircraft.

EXAMPLE #5: In-flight service. NW FAs do one service round in first and then sit their butts down and leaf through magazines for the duration of the flight. Asking for an additional cocktail often yields nasty looks and a righteous indignation.

If I honestly thought the unions has the best interests of the passengers or the organization in mind I might be sympathetic, but you don't. You antagonize the company, slander the management and hold customers hostage while harassing people to get them to vote for the union.

Look at every single industry in the US with strong unions: they have either failed (steel industry, auto industry) or are ineffective (public education, trade workers, public transport employees). All you do is antagonize to justify your existence. You are greedy, selfish and protect indifference and incompetence. You are labor's worst nightmare, the worst-case scenario.

Ask the steel workers of Pittsburgh if their harsh union tactics were worth it. The entire economy of a region has been destroyed and has not recovered in 30+ years. Ask the same of the UAW in Detroit. The only thing Detroit has going for it is a lovely airport which you are trying to destroy.

If you people are so unhappy then quit. Leave the jobs to people who want to do them and are willing to partner with the company to better the airline.

Not true, TSA employees are quite effective. Surely the union has a part in that. ;)

http://tsa.afge.org/

I don't know about the flight attendants and other crew. But as for pilots, I have never met a single airline pilot who didn't loathe ALPA. There may be some pilots on FT who will contradict me, but I've known quite a few. All of them hate ALPA.

I personally disagree...while NWA & the unions were at each others throats all the time they at least agreed to put the PAX first...from what I can see DL & their employees are in a love affair and the PAX only gets in between them and is viewed as such....personally I'm anti union however Richard has worked with these unions before and while I didn't like CHAOS they quickly got the msg so I wouldn't have a problem with DL going union as a pax

You speak like this happens with 100% of NWA flight attendants. My experience would tend to disagree with that. 95% of NWA flight attendants have been just the opposite of what you describe.

Interestingly enough, I HAVE experienced some of what you describe from DL flight attendants. Maybe "unions" aren't the problem. Maybe "unions" have nothing to do with it.

Let's face it. You hate unions. Fine, so be it. Luckily you are not voting on the FA representation. Luckily your opinion doesn't matter.
You must not have met very many pilots.

If you really think they all hate ALPA, why haven't they tossed the union out? They certainly have that ability, and if the "hate" is as strong as you imply, they would have done so.

The fact of the matter is, union or no union isn't going to fix DL's dilapidated 767-300ER, 777-200ER BE cabins, the mediocre service I get from DL FAs more often than not, DL's inadequate and ancient IT platform, a network that wants to send me through the ATL and JFK hell-holes for most connections, and the pathetic excuse for a loyalty program that is SkyMiles.

DL (and all you anti-union mouthpieces) have far bigger issues to deal with.

The problem with making broad generalizations is there are just that. Why a workforce is lazy is a lot more complicated than just being union or not.

JL and NH FAs are unionized. Does that mean their service level is below DL? Not even close.

WN is entirely unionized as well. You wouldn't know if from first glance and despite not having FC they still score very well for customer satisfaction, operations and profit.

A lot of acrimony between in the workforce has a lot more to do with management interaction than the presence of collective bargaining.

I would challenge those who think they know everything about why unions or management are Evil to take a listen to this weeks "This American Life" radio show. It's about the NUMMI car plant in California, GM, Toyota and the UAW.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

+1 ^ what a thoughtful and well-reasoned post.

NWAFA can confirm I'm far from an "anti union" mouth piece...the union & NWA's management acted like children who needed a good spanking.......but thankfully both sides FINALLY agreed the PAX pays their paycheck, but it wasn't easy...chaos was stupid but I do agree there isn't any service difference between the legacy crews...I've had terrible service on DL, I've had terrible service on CO, I've had terrible service on NW (the only airline I haven't had terrible service on is SWA and unfortunately I did hold A+ for a long time)

+2 it's about the culture of a company.....

This thread needs to either be locked or moved to OMNI/PR. All it serves to do is give a place for people to voice prejudices and venom.

Amen!

And yet, NW went bankrupt, Delta went bankrupt, there was a merger and through it all the Delta pilots maintained their union. Logically one must assume that the Delta pilots see utility in their union.

While there may be complaints and issues, I suspect the pilots perceive benefit.