Originally Posted by
More Bacon
Come on, you are above such scare tactics! I don't believe it. I believe we could attain better representation and advocacy than we have now at every level, at a fraction of the cost, with money left over.
I don't buy the assertion that ALPA is somehow necessary to successfully bargain with the company. 12,000 pilots rowing in the same direction, and not distracted by national's buffoonery, is a far more powerful negotiating voice.
Wouldn't you agree that having our dues money redistributed to national bureaucrats and DCI pilot groups is an utter abomination? Surely you can admit that some amount of our dues money is woefully misappropriated and works against our best interests.
How much have Delta pilots paid for the DFR lawsuit so far?
Transparency? Communication? not so much.
See, the thing is I am not trying to "scare" you. I just see what is coming down the pike, and going through a change in representation is a golden time for the most powerful airline CEO to pull it off. A change of power is always a great time. There will be a huge learning curve for DPA or any new group for that fact and that take time and a lot of money.
I researched where our dues money was going a few years back and frankly, I do not think we could do it for cheaper. We use 10 million to operate the MEC, of the other 20 million, the LEC budgets, all of the lawyers, support staff, MEC offices, LEC offices, schools, etc come out of that 20 million. Given the amount of time our lawyers, the ALPA lawyers and their teams spend on DALPA issues, I think you would be hard pressed to find a firm that would take this workload on and bill less than 10 million a year. These guys are working all of the time on many many cases on top of legally advising us on LOA's, TA's and other items needing legal opinions. Just getting a glimpse of what they work on, made me realize that we would need at least 30-40 lawyers working full time to get the services that ALPA legal provides. This does not include the work of EF&A, membership services, our Multimedia dept, real estate dept etc. All of that is taken care of by that 20 million that everyone seems to think goes to national and then pays for the RJ guys FPL.
Do we pay for some smaller carriers as part of the pooling? Sure, like Bearskin, but National is forcing all of the smaller MEC to live on their dues dollars. That is progress in action. They are allowing MEC's like ours to have the assets we want and need. Once again, ALPA is doing what ALPA does, morph.
There is a lot of misinformation out there on where this money goes. That does not stat that there is some inefficiency within ALPA. Of course there are issues that need to be solved. I have a laundry list of issues I want addressed, on the local and National level, and they are a top priority for me. What I do not want is to cause greater harm because some of these issues cannot be solved in a fifteen second sound bite. There is a difference. ALPA is far from perfect, but given where we are in the matriculation of the airline industry, I honestly believe it is extremely short sighted to just try something new. FDX did that and quickly came back. I consider them our peers and prefer to use their experience as a litmus test to what ours would be.