United Furloughees Soon to be the Next Victims of ALPA Conflict of Interest

The ALPA "conflict of interest" at the national level continues to manifest itself in new ways every day. Two parties that share the same attorney can never hope for aggressive and exclusive representation. In the case of the United and Continental merger, once again, the conflict of interest is about to do significant harm to dues paying ALPA members. In this merger, ALPA represents both parties and is faced with the reality of being unable to properly represent either side in the seniority list integration process that must soon take place for fear of lawsuits for failure to represent and in defense against a potential decision by United Pilots to seek independent representation.

The recent UAL Tentative Agreement (CLICK HERE for the full TA and CLICK HERE for a TA Summary) has been written with language that deeply harms many current United Pilot furloughees by removing longevity that they have earned contractually and are depending on for career progression.

From the UAL TA, Letter of Agreement 25, Merger Transition Issues:

4. Pay Longevity Credit for Furloughees
Upon date of signing, any pilot who is, or previously was, furloughed and whose accrued pay longevity is less than that of pilots hired on or before 5/6/08 shall receive additional pay longevity credit for time spent on furlough, but only to the extent that such credit does not provide a pay longevity date prior to 5/7/08.

When an Integrated Seniority List is presented to the Company that satisfies the terms of Section 5 of the Transition and Process Agreement (“TPA”), pilots who are or previously were furloughed shall receive additional pay longevity credit for all time spent on furlough (read: "furlough longevity repair") provided that they have additional time on furlough which was not credited for pay longevity purposes upon date of signing, and provided further that the application of such additional credit does not result in any s-United pilot having a pay longevity date that is earlier than the pay longevity date of the next most senior s-Continental pilot.

The date of 5/6/08 is significant because it is the hire date of the most junior Continental pilot. The effect of this LOA is to remove longevity from furloughees that were hired after that date. This is significant because a future arbitrator will look at this language for determining a combined seniority list. This does not bode well for the UAL furloughees or the entire UAL pilot group.

This scenario is very similar to the $1.2 Billion TWA Lawsuit currently proceeding against ALPA. In that situation, ALPA was responsible for representing the nearly 2,400 TWA Pilots in their integration with American. Unfortunately, because of the ALPA "Unity Resolution of 2000" which mandated that ALPA seek to represent ALL pilots in the U.S. and Canada, ALPA was also in the middle of aggressively courting the American Pilot group. ALPA National convinced the TWA pilots to give up their scope protections and, consequently, the TWA Pilots were severely harmed. In the UAL scenario, ALPA is currently trying to get the UAL pilot group to voluntarily give up earned longevity for UAL furloughees, many of whom have no say in the upcoming vote.

The furloughed UAL Pilots have every right to follow the path of the TWA Pilots and file a new, multi-million dollar lawsuit for ALPA's failure to properly represent them in the UAL/CAL merger. All ALPA members nationally will end up paying for the defense against this lawsuit and the likely damages to follow. Add this lawsuit to the $340M lawsuit by AirTran Pilots against ALPA, the TWA Lawsuit, the Ford-Cooksey Lawsuit and several other DFR lawsuits in the past and one can clearly see ALPA has a broken business model that cannot be fixed.

The Delta Pilots Association will exclusively represent our members, right down to the most junior pilot, and we will get back to the core principle of "no man left behind". We will NEVER consider the rights of a junior pilot to be expendable and we will fight vigorously to protect the careers of every pilot on our list, without the responsibility of attempting to represent another pilot group simultaneously.

DPA supports the United Pilot group and will assist the UAL/CAL group in organizing an independent union as soon as it is evident that ALPA has lost relevance in that group as well.