Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
You guys still don't get it.
We do not have good scope because those who ran (and run) our union do not want good scope.
Why would ALPA fight to conclude Republic Airlines is a single air carrier after having fought so damn hard to prevent ASA, Comair and Delta from being considered a single air carrier? Same goes with Northwest and their regional carriers, as well as MidWest.
The union's course of conduct is absolutely clear. Some flying is considered undesirable and unable to command the pay and working conditions which meet major airline pilot standards. It is hoped by facilitating management's outsourcing of these undesirable jobs we can somehow profit from the work we do not want (as a union) to perform. We use our scope to define flying we perform, and more importantly, we use our scope to define flying we do not perform.
Outsourcing is a touchy subject for union bosses. Much of what we have in our contract and much of what we do is inconsistent with what our Reps say and write for political consumption by the masses.
The "conflict of interest" mostly exists between junior pilots who care about scope and the senior 767 Captains that run our association who mostly don't care about scope (or worse, see scope in purely economic terms ... selling unity for short term gain). Bottom line is, we did this to ourselves. Folks like me wrote as much as we could, got resolutions passed and made no secret of our concerns, but for the last decade the Delta (and NWA) pilots have continued to ratify these agreements then complain about the results.
ALPA's position on Republic is entirely consistent with ALPA policy and that decision is being made by the very same people who insisted that ASA & Comair were not "Delta" despite having MUCH higher levels of operational integration than Frontier and the other Republic subsidiaries.
Deadhead asks, "where is the unity in that?" It is an excellent question. I've asked my Reps to use that question as a litmus test for every decision they make. If they would apply that simple, clear, rule to the administration of a union we could avoid a lot of pain and career harm to ALPA members.
I think that boldfaced point is paramount and falls in line with my personal belief that pilots are their own worst enemy at times.
When a pilot is looking at moving up to heavier, bigger, better-paying equipment, why must they all of a sudden look back and think that the plane they used to fly was all of a sudden beneath them. Therein lies the problem, that mentality is what has made certain pilots think that 76 seats is somehow beneath them. If left unchecked it is extremely feasible and likely to see the next generation 100-seat aircraft being operated by regional feed.
If ALPA wants to preach and lecture about the importance of Unity amongst all pilots, then they need to establish One Standard from each and every pilot group while demanding those groups fight for that standard on each and every single contract negotiation. Until we can see this type of pushback from ALPA at the National level, the pilot groups will continue to circle the drain on one another until the last group willing to take the lowest pay/standards is left standing.