Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
ALPA's problem created by teaming up with management is that they get a lot of information that can not be disclosed to the general membership. In fact, the Reps are not told until they "need to know." Information is power and the Admin has the power (and often the duty) to with hold information.
Thus, certain key positions have centralized power that is greater than it should be and deals are done which should have been sent to membership ratification ... it is all justifiable.
That is why I demand our MEC come out with a statement "no member gets sold." I do not trust them because they have refused to make a commitment to our pilots. Our Admin should be very tightly controlled with guidance from the bottom up. Instead we have top down leadership from an unelected few who have the power to cut anyone they don't like out of the loop.
We would do better if we prohibited the union guys from signing those confidentiality agreements.
Management invites them to their parties and makes them feel like they are part of some "inner circle" of illuminati and many of them end up thinking they are junior executives and forget who they really work for.
Management uses the selective distribution of "privileged information" to control our union.
Same with the pilot seat on the BOD. Its something ALPA National wants as part of their political agenda so they can feel like they are taking part in "corporate governance". In reality, its used by management to draw the union into their schemes to lower the cost of labor.
We're dreaming if we think management is ever going to provide the union guys with some confidential report saying we could afford to give the pilots a 50% raise. There will however be plenty of secret data showing how critical it is to control our labor costs because fuel hedging is so difficult to master.