Boo. I disagree. The "Plan" is not working to get the release before congress goes on recesse.

Dock




July 24, 2012

Fellow Pilots,

You don’t need your union to tell you that frustration among our pilots is at an all-time high. The recent Strike Authorization Ballot, where 99 percent of our pilots voted in favor of authorizing the MECs to call a legal strike at the appropriate time, is testament to that frustration. This sent a clear message to management that our pilots have had enough.

While it may not be noticeable on the surface, this overwhelming support gives us leverage as we reach a critical stage in our negotiations for a Joint Collective Bargaining Agreement. We’ve come this far and waited this long to possibly see some real progress at the negotiating table. Now is not the time to change course or be distracted. Unfortunately, such a distraction has come to our attention, and it is our obligation to alert the pilot group of the ramifications it could produce.

As many of you already know, an invitation is circulating within the pilot group via various pilot forums and email chains to join a group of pilots in an informational picketing event in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. We must tell you that this picketing event is NOT sanctioned by ALPA. The event is not part of the MECs’ strategic plans and it could quite possibly be detrimental to the negotiating process.

While we respect the desired intentions of the organizers of Thursday’s event, we simply cannot condone or support this operation. The informational picketing event planned for Thursday in Washington could place our efforts at risk.

We fully understand these pilots’ frustrations and their desire to stir action before Congress adjourns for the summer recess. This planned picket, however, will not garner that action. If anything, it may produce opposite and potentially negative effects.

Picketing in uniform under a permit not obtained or sanctioned by the UAL and CAL MECs is not the way to demonstrate the unity supplied by last week’s historic joint strike vote, nor is it the way to vent your frustration with the slow progress of negotiations. The best way to support our negotiating efforts is to remain unified and not to act outside of our union’s plans at this critical time.

How or if United management will react to participants involved in an unsanctioned, non-ALPA event is undetermined, but we certainly don’t want any of our pilots putting themselves in a position where management could take negative actions.

We understand the frustration the long overdue JCBA is causing on the line. We all share that frustration. But we ask that you let your union leadership continue to represent you and bargain collectively on a unified basis in the best interests of all 12,000 pilots. We are strongest when we stand together. We harm our efforts and by definition do not act as a union when we act separately. As such, we ask that you do not put yourself at risk or put future negotiations in jeopardy by participating in any activity not sanctioned by ALPA.

United, we will not fail.

In unity,


Captain Pieter Velzeboer
Chairman, United MEC SPSC
Captain Marty Miller
Chairman, Continental MEC SPSC