Originally Posted by
76drvr
Meet and confer never caused the outsourcing, so I don't follow your logic. I'll keep an open mind, but if the DPA is claiming that it was having RJ pilots at ALPA that caused the outsourcing then that is cheap rhetoric and nothing more. The RJ guys didn't vote on our contract, we did. Delta spinning off Compass, Mesaba and ASA wasn't a union decision and neither was cutting CMR to 44 aircraft.
Exactly.
Meet and confer might be a good time to start talking strategies to recover flying, to sunset outsourcing, to build bridges for union members so that a guy who only flies Delta passengers does not have to reset his longevity twice in a career. (it is BS that rampers and gate agents kept their longevity (for pay and bene's) in the Delta system, but pilots check their years of service at the door)
The President of ALPA has ALWAYS had the power to with hold his signature from a contract. If there was a problem (as there was once with a regional carrier, see CC Air) the President could refuse a pilot ratified contract. Nothing that egregious has happened in recent memory, but what the "meet and confer" does is formalize a process that has always been part of ALPA's internal system of dispute resolution.
To understand "meet and confer" you have to understand the problem it is designed to avert and the cooperation it hopes to foster.