Slight tweak. The language was fine and our lawyers are fine. The problem was (and probably still is) that our lawyers practice politics first, then law.
One has to grasp the motivation for ALPA to partner with management in the outsourcing business. Once you understand, then the light will come on and you will understand the dynamics of our contract negotiations and the Company's decisions as well.
ALPA and Delta have partnered to outsource our work. What we gain is a percentage of money the company saves by not using us. So the equation is:
Mainline cost - Outsourced Cost = Extra Money for us
To get the lowest outsourced cost management
and ALPA want the
maximum number of cut rate competitors. That is why we stopped fighting the Republic arrangement. That is why there is no language to reduce the number of competitors (like a requirement that only ALPA pilots perform the work).
Additionally, when guys like me were at the regionals we wanted to establish our own scope to prevent whipsaw and cut rate competition from destroying our jobs (example .. Comair has been destroyed) The mainline MEC's did not want Regional Carriers striking deals directly with Delta and they used ALPA's exclusive right as a sole bargaining agent to block those efforts.
ALPA's attorneys know who signs their pay checks. If ALPA leadership does not want to reduce competition or allow regional scope then they find the legal tool to reach those political goals. The answer was their legal opinion that holding company language was not binding, using the reasoning that a non signatory third party could not be bound by a contract they did not agree to. (or something like that, the reasoning has always been a bit nebulous because it really is not accurate and the Reps who explain it are not attorneys ... it gets muddy) (apparently none of them belong to an HMO like ours
...
we are third parties to the contract between UHC and Delta and UHC and your provider ... if you don't think you are bound .. think again)
Back when I ran litigation I would fire attorneys who lied to us. It is
extremely dangerous to rely on Counsel who is telling you what you want to hear instead of the truth. In ALPA's case it could be argued that the majority of DFR litigation and quite a few of the strategic errors of the last decade was based on this single hinge point of legal reasoning (or justification).
Our current TA shows a slight evolutionary move in our holding company language. Our current Reps and Admin are mostly a generation removed from the manipulations necessary to create DCI, but some are still there. Whether or not they even understand the situation is an open question ... after all, they rely on their attorneys and their attorneys rely on the politicians. It is somewhat of a closed feedback loop.
------- How this applies to DPA --------
The DPA is an interesting political construct. It's leadership has taken the justifications which created this mess of outsourcing and actually believed them to be FACT. Even more dangerous than an attorney who lies to his client, is a client who believes those lies and acts on them.
ALPA did something that makes me angry. ALPA made the decision that some work was going to be outsourced. ALPA broke unity and ALPA ow has a decade long wake of tactical blunders resulting from the decision to outsource what became Delta Connection.
The DPA does something that scares me. They took ALPA's justifications and believed them. It is terrible to make the mistakes of the past a foundation for our future. ... and just as I wrote that, Carl gave me a beautiful example ...Delta is bound. Delta writes the checks and Delta makes the schedule. Delta certainly has the power to pull down a percentage of it's flying, as operated by third parties.
The irony is, the DPA believes the lies ALPA told them and uses them to justify removing ALPA. It's really kinda funny. It is rare to find such true irony. It would be a lot funnier if the Delta pay check wasn't used to pay the mortgage on my family's home.