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Oberndorf for ALPA President 2014

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Oberndorf for ALPA President 2014

Old 06-12-2014, 11:45 AM
  #1  
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Default Oberndorf for ALPA President 2014

Something to chew on. I got this email the other day...

**************************

Oberndorf for President 2014
Standing up for Labor!


Dear fellow ALPA members:

Throughout the past two decades, I have witnessed and studied the inability of our association to protect and enhance our careers. Certainly, you would think that our very livelihood and security would be the upmost concern of the world’s largest pilots union…RIGHT…? This is exactly why I have decided to run for ALPA National President this fall. In the very near future, I intend to take you on a journey by delivering a series of letters which will highlight the major reasons “why we are where we are,” and how we got there.

It is vitally important that we get ALPA back on track. Immediately, this means that our association must revert back to the Labor Union that it is supposed to be, and set aside the role of being merely an “advocate” for our careers. Furthermore, we need to take back our coveted Safety department from management politicians and restore it to the preeminence that former ALPA brethren worked tirelessly to maintain. The ability of ALPA Safety to be autonomous and neutral will enable the membership, the flying public, and all other stakeholders to feel confident about the product that we deliver.

In contrast to our current leadership, I intend to bring together all major pilot union organizations and legislative authorities to work for our collective benefit. This is exactly what should have been done decades ago. ALPA may not be the nation’s largest union, and we may not be the biggest legislative force in the United States, but by pulling together our strength, we will parlay our effort into tremendous success. We can solidify our goals, thus ensuring that ALPA more effectively represents you as a union, rather than consistently bending to the will of management’s Airlines For America (A4A) trade association.

You have heard the preaching about ALPA as a “bottom up organization” from “top down” leaders so many times; it’s as if the more they say it, the more you should believe it. Most of us agree that ALPA is anything but a “bottom up organization.” The lack of a true member-driven association creates apathy and a sense of helplessness. This has not served you well. When I’m elected this fall, your voice will be my top priority. Here is my promise to you: I will do everything in my power to change the ALPA Constitution & Bylaws to affect membership voting for your MEC Officers. YOU deserve to have the vote that decides so much of your fate in your chosen profession!

Enabling the membership to elect top leaders will create a system similar to our US government, with much necessary checks and balances. An executive branch voted in by the individual members will allow true leaders to emerge. These representatives will have to campaign for your vote, thus forcing candidates to address common sense agendas and publically present goals and platforms in order to gain your support. Much more importantly, this system establishes credibility and value in its members.

In most recent history (proportions remain the same), MEC Officers have been chosen in secret by 8 people from a 7,500 member airline, or by 22 in a 12,500 member airline…REALLY…? That is problematic at its core. I will work tirelessly to change this and bring about a more respectable, credible and transparent process to your representation.

The Board of Directors Meeting and National Officer Elections are in October. This will come about sooner than we might think. With your help, I will make a difference. Attached, you’ll find a resolution that proposes changing the ALPA Constitution and Bylaws. It will allow membership voting for MEC Officer positions. I encourage that WE get this submitted at each of ALPA’s local councils! This will not be easy, but with a little perseverance on your part, it is definitely achievable. Changing deeply rooted institutional protectionist policies takes commitment and tenacity.

When I launched an exploration for a campaign a few weeks ago, I asked you to email and/or call with your concerns and thoughts regarding the state of our union. I have received an overwhelming response from ALPA Pilots who are very supportive of getting ALPA back on track. I thank you for that. Please visit our website to see how you can help with our campaign. oberndorf

With your participation, we will make the changes necessary to defend and enhance our careers. This is our duty. We will forevermore protect the profession for those who follow.


Faithfully and Fraternally,

Heide Oberndorf
Candidate for ALPA President
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Old 06-18-2014, 09:26 AM
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A website and everything. Bonafide!
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Old 07-04-2014, 04:09 AM
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Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.
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Old 07-14-2014, 04:06 PM
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Oberndorf sounds good but ALPA dose'nt only need the respect of it's members, it needs the respect of all pilots. Right now, I rate it right up there with congress.
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Old 07-17-2014, 07:40 PM
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One question, who does Oberndorf fly for?
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Old 07-18-2014, 05:48 AM
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UAL since 1997.
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Old 07-23-2014, 05:46 PM
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Default Oberndorf for ALPA President 2014

I got this too. Nice letter but very lengthy.
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Old 07-23-2014, 06:11 PM
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So, what does Oberndorf think about the 85 merger attempt between Frontier and UAL? And how would he explain it to an ex Frontier pilot.
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Old 08-11-2014, 07:20 AM
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Originally Posted by IFLYACRJ View Post
I got this too. Nice letter but very lengthy.
If you think that is lengthy, then try this:

This message is sent in accordance with Article I, Section 19 of the ALPA Constitution and By-Laws and applicable law, which require ALPA to comply with all reasonable requests from candidates for union office to distribute campaign literature. All expenses associated with this message are borne by the candidate or members acting on the candidate's behalf.
*****



The CAL/UAL Joint Contract
ALPA’s Largest Merger in its History
I first would like to thank the membership and ALPA BOD members who have reached out to me with such positive feedback following my first two letters. Your feedback and support continue to shore up my faith that ALPA truly can be the membership driven, member serving organization that it needs to be, provided we have the right leadership and direction.

When I came to the UAL MEC as the Legislative Chairman in January 2012, I was tasked with working outside the box and finding creative solutions to leverage our position during the Section 6 negotiating process. Our merger was announced in May 2010 and finalized October 2010. The CEO’s from both airlines (Smisek & Tilton) spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill making grand promises of a smooth transition, including getting the labor contracts done right away. Regarding the pilots’ joint CBA, they even promised to “meet in direct negotiations at least four whole or partial days every week until October 5, 2010 with the intent of completing the negotiations within that eight-week period” (as stated in ALPA’s Transition & Process Agreement between UAL/CAL ALPA and management). It would be more than two years after the merger before we finally secured our Joint Contract.

I engaged Jay Heppner (the UAL MEC Chairman) right away and had discussions which centered on the use of political pressure to leverage ourselves under the Railway Labor Act in order to expedite our negotiations beyond the stagnation being fostered by management. With this in mind, I brought in a UAL MEC member who could offer us access to the high level government and political contacts that would be critical to our success.

We first called a former high-level executive at the Department of Justice, knowing that this person would be very supportive. Very quickly, she was able to introduce us to a prominent D.C. lobbyist and renowned negotiating attorney at the high-powered Washington beltway law firm Patton Boggs. This man is so well connected in Washington circles that the mere mention of his name and his law firm sent the Company's lawyers and negotiators into frantic damage control. He had also been a senior policy advisor for President Clinton and had access virtually everywhere in D.C., including the White House. This individual would set us on a very similar path to that which the Allied Pilots Association took in their negotiations back in the 1990’s; a path that would have been much smoother, much quicker and more successful had we not had ALPA National working to undermine our efforts.

In the 90’s, the American pilots knew they had limited resources and would be unlikely to ‘win’ a prolonged strike, however the labor friendly Clinton administration gave them assurances that they would not be left to battle the corporation by themselves. Under White House pressure, the National Mediation Board (NMB) released the APA from mediation and they entered the mandatory 30-day “cooling off” period. The goal was to get to a strike and have the President order them back to work and authorize a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) for arbitration. The APA was able to get favorable representation on the PEB and the support they needed from the Whitehouse when Clinton put his friend, Vernon Jordan, in charge of setting up the arbitration. Within thirty days of being ordered back to work, the American Airlines pilots had the richest contract in the industry. And what’s more, they had no SCABS to deal with, no lost wages and no interruption in service for the public.
Let us turn our attention now to November 2010, when United Airlines seemed very happy to agree to bring in the NMB to help with negotiations. This was strange, based on the fact that the board was appointed with two Democrats and one Republican. What we didn’t yet understand was the insidious nature of the relationship between all the players and how this collusion would combine to stymie our efforts to quickly and decisively move forward our negotiations: NMB Chair Linda Puchala (ex-flight attendant), NMB Member Harry Hoglander (ex-ALPA National insider), Nick Calio (CEO of Airlines For America), ALPA President Lee Moak, Seth Rosen (long time ALPA National “outside counsel”), CAL MEC Chairman Jay Pierce, and Jeff Smisek (UAL CEO and Vice Chairman of the BOD - Airlines For America).

My team briefed our Washington advisor on all aspects of our negotiations, including the fact that it had been two years since CEO’s Tilton and Smisek promised Congress a smooth completion of the merger and labor contracts in order to get DOT approval. Once our advisor fully understood our situation, he concluded that our chances of success were very good and he wanted to follow a route similar to that of the American Airlines pilots. Right from the beginning, we established a “short list” of arbitrators who would be selected for the PEB when the time came, and it surely did not include anyone who the corporate boys would have wanted to take on.

With the UAL MEC briefed and on board, we put our advisor and our plan into action and NMB Chairman Puchala began receiving calls from the White House asking why the United and Continental pilots didn’t have a deal. This is when ALPA President Lee Moak and CAL MEC Chairman Jay Pierce became extremely interested in what our plan of execution was to expedite negotiations. Based on the fact that these two people had been content to sit on their hands and let management drag this process out for years, and with worries about previous interaction between management and Pierce, I felt that there were very few people we could trust with the full details of our plan. With that in mind, I gave only general details of our legislative plan to Moak and Pierce. Once these few details had been released, it was very interesting that we suddenly began to hear from ALPA consultants, advisors and attorneys that: “The way the Railway Labor Act is set up, a release from mediation is practically impossible.” These parties argued that this was not the way we needed to proceed and said that even if we were to be released, the 30-day cooling off period would simply be used for both sides to “lawyer up” and we didn’t want that. ALPA National advisors threatened that if we did get to a PEB, “It won’t end well for labor.”

Instead of standing up to management and telling the pilots that through solid strategic planning and perseverance we had an excellent chance of success at bringing home an industry leading contract, ALPA decided to undermine our approach and react to the whims of the company and the NMB. ALPA National’s propaganda began to infiltrate the rank & file and soon we had line pilots claiming to be experts on what we could or could not accomplish under the RLA. These “experts” were essentially Lee Moak supporters who agreed with his management-friendly approach to labor negotiations. His plan was little more than a management driven process where we were to take orders from the A4A and their team of lobbyists and advisors, wait as long as management wanted to wait, and take whatever management wanted us to have when the time finally came. My team instinctively felt that ALPA’s approach would get us nowhere, and I had extreme confidence in the advice we were getting from outside counsel due to their standing record of solid results. Thus, in the face of endless excuses from the NMB and ALPA advisors for the glacial pace of negotiations, we decided to fully embrace this new plan with or without ALPA National’s help.

Once Moak and Pierce knew that it was our outside advisor who was responsible for generating the extreme pressure being applied on Linda Puchala of the NMB to release the pilots, it is my belief that Lee Moak worked in concert with his connections at the A4A to shut us down. The A4A’s CEO and top political lobbyist, Nick Calio (who is now conveniently an editorial writer for Air Line Pilot Magazine), began making calls to Patton Boggs inquiring about the work our advisor was doing for United pilots. Meanwhile Seth Rosen (long time ALPA attorney and Lee Moak’s top negotiations advisor) started to publically discredit our advisor to anyone who would listen. Moak and Pierce’s plan to get rid of our D.C. insider reached a truly astonishing level at a scheduled joint CAL/UAL MEC meeting where Pierce had a select CAL MEC Member leave the room at various times to meet with Seth Rosen who was just outside. Each time, she would return and grill our advisor with virtually the exact same questions that Nick Calio had asked the partners at Patton Boggs. Subsequent calls to Patton Boggs from Calio claimed a “conflict of interest” due to other multi-million dollar accounts that Patton Boggs had with the airlines. This meant that despite the existence of no true conflict, the big money pressure had worked. Under protest, our advisor had to let us go. This is how the game is played in Washington D.C. We had been outmaneuvered from behind by our own Association.

I was adamant that we needed to continue the pressure on the NMB through political avenues, making certain that Congress knew labor was being left behind in the world’s largest airline merger. Before our attorney left, he set us up with another D.C. insider who would advise us the rest of the way to the goal line. We were furious at the previous betrayals, and determined to press our cause forward. This time, only three people would know the real name of our ally.

Eventually, with the strong support of some members of the UAL and CAL MEC’s, we were able to put enough pressure on Moak to write a letter to the NMB asking that the United Pilots be released. To say that this letter was written begrudgingly is an understatement. This occurred concurrently with the IFALPA conference which took place in Paris in the spring of 2012. Given the utter disrespect that United-Continental had shown for the various labor groups from the very start of the merger, I find it rather distasteful that our ALPA President invited Doug Mc Keen, Senior VP of Labor Relations for United Airlines, to the IFALPA conference just as UAL/CAL negotiations were heating up. Moak did write the letter, however it became clear that he made certain that behind the scenes, Seth Rosen would tell Linda Puchala to keep informing the Senate Committees and the White House staff that the pilots were “close” to a deal. After further pressure from my team, another letter urging release went out from Moak, but only because he was shamed into writing it by an outraged UAL and CAL MEC made furious by derogatory comments from UAL management. Behind the scenes, the alternate message of “it's all OK” and “we’re getting close” was still being delivered to the NMB by Moak and his advisors and to Washington by the NMB. Not surprisingly, progress continued to be glacial. Eventually, I demanded that Moak write a third letter and had come just short of dragging him to a typewriter to make it happen. Sadly, the mixed-message damage had been done and unbelievably, we never got an answer from the NMB to our three requests for release.

In the midst of this incredible circus, my team reached out to the upper echelon of the AFL-CIO’s leadership, where we found that enthusiasm for our cause was palpable. We initially met with the knowledge and blessing of ALPA, but at the first sign of successful collaboration, we were prevented from further contact with them unless we had permission from National. It was at this point that I had no doubt that our union President was aggressively working against us.

Despite these setbacks, we continued to work with our Washington insider and our network of D.C. friends to apply a steady stream of pressure on the NMB. Puchala continued to receive calls from the White House staff at a more aggressive rate. Deeply aggravated, Puchala addressed the joint CAL/UAL MEC’s and stated (using profanity) that if Congress and the White House would simply leave her alone, she’d get us a contract. Despite the clear fact that this was not true, and despite the constant undermining of our efforts by Moak and his consultants, we saw this as an opportunity and turned Puchala’s disrespect into a briefing item that we carried to Capitol Hill. An extremely senior Senator who had been keeping track of our struggle was not impressed. He personally called Puchala to relay that message. In no uncertain terms, he laid down the law regarding when she had to complete the contract negotiations or otherwise release the pilots to a cooling off period.

In the end we did achieve success using our strategy in Washington D.C. Regardless, by any rational assessment, the process was unacceptably slow. What's most important for you to know and consider going forward is that not only did the NMB staunchly defend its ridiculous multi-year process, but Lee Moak and his ALPA National staffers and consultants did as well. The Railway Labor Act, enacted by Congress and amended in 1936 to include the piloting profession, is meant to protect the free rights of labor -- YOUR RIGHTS -- when faced with inaction in the collective bargaining process. ALPA did not wish to allow us to exercise these rights as a union!

If elected ALPA President this October, I will NEVER work against you. Instead, I will encourage you to exercise your rights under the law. I will bring you experienced labor advocates to negotiate and lobby on your behalf when you need them, and together we will succeed where acquiescence and collusion have failed for years.

You need and deserve top negotiating attorneys, sourced outside of ALPA, working under renewable, results-oriented contracts. The corporations negotiate using the best possible legal representation, why shouldn’t we? Aren’t you tired of hearing about everything you can’t do from our ALPA advisors and in house attorneys vs. ways that you CAN achieve success? I am!

Finally, let me be clear that working with management collaboratively is not a bad thing. In fact, it should be encouraged. However, lying in bed with them and allowing management to dictate all terms to us as we go forward in our careers will do nothing more than give the A4A the ability to manage us into extinction.

Please visit my website for the most up to date information and see how you can help.

http://www.oberndorfforpresident.org/#!help-us/c1se

Fraternally,
Heide Oberndorf
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Old 08-11-2014, 01:32 PM
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From an email titled "ALPA fires Heide Oberndorf"


Oberndorf for President

Dear ALPA Members:
I’m writing to inform you that as a result of my last letter to you regarding the CAL/UAL Merger, I have been relieved of my duties as UAL MEC Legislative Chairman and all corresponding legislative work. I am extremely saddened and disheartened by this recent event. ALPA talks about being a "bottom up organization" but actions like this are nothing more than "top down" intimidation tactics that have been
used to dissuade anyone from offering the much needed transparency and accountability our Association needs in order to remain relevant in the 21
st century.

You need to know two things regarding this event:
1. This move has strengthened my resolve to engage all ALPA Members in my campaign for ALPA President, because that’s what a "bottom up organization" is all about.
2. Everything I wrote to you in my previous letter is truthful and factual. I was there. I lived it, and saw it with my own eyes. You deserve nothing less than the truth.

I have been accused of "straying afield from an issues-based debate." Not only do I stand ready to debate any ALPA President Candidate on the issues, but my communications to you have been nothing but "issues-based." For a "bottom up organization," I ask you - why is my campaign the first in the history of ALPA to include the rank & file membership? I
am the only candidate to offer a platform and bring important issues to be debated during this campaign. I expect that by October you will have heard just about nothing from any of the other candidates that are seeking this position.

I believe the most important asset to our Association is YOU, the rank & file member. Therefore I’m presenting my campaign to you in order for you to contact your elected ALPA Representative and tell them that you support Heide Oberndorf for ALPA President. Your Reps work hard to represent you but won’t know what you’re thinking unless you tell them. Is this different than the back room deals of all past ALPA presidential elections? ABSOLUTELY!

ALPA has asked me on three occasions to "pull down my website," "stop my campaign," and "pull out of the race." I
will do none of the above and I think you should all be asking, "Why?" What I WILL do is redouble my efforts to bring you the issues-based campaign and platform that you deserve.

I’d like to thank the many BOD and rank & file members who have taken time to reach out to me. I thank you for your support and encouragement and look forward to bringing about much needed changes to our Association going forward.

Please visit my website for the most up to date information and to see how you can help.

oberndorf

Fraternally,
Heide
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