Here is one source.

UAL LAX base blastmail
December 31, 2011

United Pilots of Los Angeles:


By now you've probably seen or heard about the company entering into a deal with the CAL MEC to give the CAL pilots profit sharing for 2011. This has generated a significant amount of email and message traffic to your local officers, so Bill asked me to take a moment to provide you with some information since John and I were at the last Special MEC Meeting while Bill recuperates from his shoulder surgery.

As I said in an earlier update, the current situation is not complicated but some folks have tried very hard to make it that way and that is unfortunate. The simple fact of the matter regarding profit sharing is that the CAL pilots did not have it because they had earlier given it away as a concession. Conversely, the United pilots had it because we received it in exchange for concessions given. In other words, our profit sharing has been bought and paid for with concessions that we continue to suffer under, month by month, year by year. The CAL pilot profit sharing was a concession that was meant for them to continue to go without, month by month, year by year, until they got a new contract and rectified that situation. Please remember that part: A NEW CONTRACT. That is where all focus should be and where all aims should lead.

With that in mind, back up just over a year and in exchange for agreeing to play nice with the company regarding the merger, the United MEC and the Continental MEC entered into a Transition and Process Agreement in the name of ALL of the pilots in which we all got a few items of value to us, some specifically aimed at one pilot group or the other, and some of which lasted for only one year and/or could be canceled by the company after 18 months. The only explanation for that is a lack of leverage – we certainly would have made them permanent if we could have.

Now those items all had very real value. The CAL profit sharing is probably somewhere north of $40 million and what price shall we put on the domicile protections etc.? Now that the intervening 1 ½ years are up, the CAL and UAL pilots obviously still want those things but we also, more importantly, want a new JCBA. With that in mind, the UAL MEC Leadership hatched a plan that they then discussed with CAL Master Chairman Jay Pierce in which we might use the fact that the company dearly wanted to find a way to include the CAL pilots in that company's profit sharing plan as part of a leverage and enticement package to not only extend the T&PA in its' entirety, but also to entice and incentivize UAL management to swiftly conclude a JCBA. This is exactly where our focus SHOULD be!