I understand your point, but I disagree with your fatalism and your solution. It IS possible to achieve unity between the MECs. I think the pilot groups ARE unified in our desires (JCBA and stable career). As I stated before, we need to get the best JCBA we can get, and let the SLI process take care of itself. As it stands, the CAL MEC and MC are intermingling the JCBA and SLI which is causing problems! Let's get them to focus on the near rocks and stop trying to control the uncontrollable.
I respectfully disagree. While I long for a unified aproach I don't see it occuring.
There are simply too many moving parts, too much buerocracy, too much ALPA policy, too many players with different agendas, too many "chiefs", too many naive reps, too many uninformed reps, too many diverging interests to make this happen right now.
I think some cooling off is in order from both MEC's.
This part I wholeheartedly agree with! I would suggest an MEC 'retreat' in a desolate area with locked doors! I would make Moak attend as well. I laid all of this out to Moak in an email exchange a couple of months ago. The problem is that all parties must be willing to engage in this type of unity in order to have the trust necessary for unified action. It's never too late to focus on our COMMON CRUCIAL goals and get our act together. Hopefully this can be the catalyst of that movement.
I agree about the threat of regional and alliance growth, but the solution lies mostly in our JCBA scope. Legislative cover would be nice, but it's not worth betting the farm on it. My most pressing concern right now is the JCBA!
I think some monthly joint MEC meetings will need to take place after the appropriate cooling off.
I think Lee Moak better get his head out of the sand. If this goes bad, this is likely the end of ALPA. They'll be re-naming this the "regional Airline Pilots Association." It sort of already is that thanks to John Prater.
More and more mainline jobs get outsourced to regionals and over-seas airlines and what is ALPA doing about it? That's our primary threat!! We better get unified around that pretty quick, or we all need to go out and do the ex-pat thing.