Originally Posted by
Zoomie
While I feel sorry for those at UAL who have been totally screwed by their parent company, what's done is done. This post is about some hard love and a reality check.
UAL shrank, and now that former size is just a number on a piece of paper that doesn't mean anything. It grew again when UAL and CAL merged. Actually, CAL shrank too, just not as much as UAL. The game of musical airline chairs is always being played, and the UAL pilot group lost a lot. This same game took a lot of other casualties with TWA, PAN AM, Eastern, and the list goes on...
UAL didn't care who it merged with back in 2010. It tried CAL back in 2008 and got rejected. In 2010, it decided to move on and court USAir. At that point CAL had a CEO who was put in place to make a deal and didn't like the result of a combined UAL/USAir to compete with. The rest is history.
The truth of the matter should be that if you are a CA when the merger happened, you should be a CA after the SLI. If you were a junior FO sitting reserve before the SLI, you should be the same after the SLI.
Some of the UAL guys (and we know UAL hired a lot between 98 and 2001) think they will be on par with CAL pilots hired during the same period. So basically, these UAL pilots think they should go from junior FO sitting reserve to sitting in a nice comfortable CA seat, hence the 90% to 65% comment. YGTBFKM.
Get real! Do you really think this is going to happen and this wouldn't be a windfall for UAL pilots? If UAL didn't merge, when a UAL pilot would eventually be recalled, do you think that they would jump straight from furlough to CA seat. Along the same lines, as a stand alone entity, when UAL furloughed, do you think at recall time, those junior FOs that were still on property would go from junior A319 FO to B757/767 CA? That is what a DOH type scenario or anything close to it would do.
CAL has slightly grown and had a ****load of retirements since 9/11. UAL has shrunk, twice. That shrinkage is no fault of anyone but the ineptitude of management at UAL and some strong industry pressure after 9/11.
Do some UAL pilots think an involuntary furlough at UAL that doesn't have a job right now at UAL, but for the past 3-4 years, they could go and apply at FDX, SWA, DL, and work there since they don't have a job should magically be placed above anyone that's currently working and has been working for 5-8 years with no furlough at CAL? How would that not be a windfall?
That brings up another question since the merger policy mentions equipment and status as being part of the equation.
What equipment does a furlough hold? Nothing. Null. Zero. It doesn't exist.
What status does a furlough hold? Unemployed unless they got hired somewhere else. As a matter of fact, some furloughed UAL pilots after 9/11 interviewed and got hired at CAL and are now CAs at L-CAL. Should a furloughed UAL pilot go in front of another furloughed UAL pilot that cut his losses and moved on with his life?
I'm sure we're all going to get screwed on this SLI. Personally, if we hadn't merged, I'd be looking at widebody FO real soon and CA a few years from now. I'm guessing that now I'll most likely have to wait a lot longer than that solely based on this merger. But that sure as heck shouldn't mean that I go from 90% to 95% and then stay at 95% for the next 5 years while UAL pilots decide whether or not to leave their job at USAir or China Air for the next 10 years.
I know my input means nothing, and our merger committees will duke it out then send it to arbitration. I'm just trying to show a little bit of sunlight to the BS that someone has been feeding some on the L-UAL side.
Well good for you, but....I am sure when ALPA sold out TWA pilots trying to woo American Pilots to ALPA, they also thought it was "done". That is until TWA pilots won their suit against ALPA. If you think that 2000+ UAL furloughees from the last decade are going to just quietly accept no longevity for pay and then be stapled...well, I doubt it and will join the growing masses that will seek the services of the same firm that is very successfully making right injustices from unfair union representation for many of the former TWA crews. You are missing the issues we are claiming...we are not claiming problems being represented as current furloughees, but when we were active ALPA pilots prior to being furloughed and now again as we become a growing group of active ALPA pilots again. I propose that most in the industry will agree that UCH is a much stronger company than either lCAL or lUAL and that redundancy was unfaily processed at the expense of lUAL junior pilots to make the merger agreeable. I am confident a good law firm can easily show the furloughs were grossly out of proportion from the industry for one reason..merger redundancy. It wasn't ineptness by UAL management but savvy greed to do whatever it took to enrich themselves. Also, maybe your short wait to be a Widebody FO or Captain might have been because of the worst recession and recovery in 90 years.
We can maintain your stance (which is oddly similar to the Senior UAL philosophy on Junior Pilots) and we'll just waste a lot of money and time via the courts to make this right or the other solution is that CAL/UAL ALPA pilots can fix this by treating us fairly in 2012/13. I don't suggest a straight DOH or a staple job either. Bottom line is that it cost 1400 UAL / 140 CAL pilot jobs to start this merger and will require at least 1400 to finish it via the JCBA. I don't think 1400 pilots should just surpase all the junior CAL pilots and likewise, I don't think you should just instantly gain 1400 numbers in seniority...both extremes are imo are windfalls.
Maybe I am just not seeing the "light" or perhaps you are getting too blinded by it!