Pineapple Guy,

You are correct there are many good men who participate in ALPA. I am not questioning any one individual's nature.

Our union was designed around two basic impulses. First, that we should fight the alter ego replacement of pilots. Second, that our activities would be governed by the democratic participation of our members. Our governing documents were structured to support these two goals.

You are correct this failure has many fathers, included among them is me. Try as I might to educate people, it was not enough.

Our union has engaged in the sale of one member's job to benefit another member. That's bad. Pinnacle's restructuring represents a new, lower, level of union conduct where an alter ego is actually created with the participation of our union. Those antiquated rules to prevent such conduct have been systematically disassembled and now their meaning is attacked, as is the Delta PWA, word by word.

In its finding, the Delta MEC has redefined it's role to that of a representative of one of many vendors who perform Delta flying.

How would that have sounded in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, or in 2010? How is it that we now define our representational relevance as limited by the flying that we have outsourced?

As a reminder of what the world looked like, just 60 days ago ... You yourself once argued that Delta flying remains Delta flying, even if permitted to be flown elsewhere. This redefinition is a change from past policy ... a big one. As our friends stated many times over the last decade, when ALPA allows an express carrier to do deals directly with mainline management, the mainline carriers will leave ALPA. This change looks bad because this change is bad.

You see your friends as the defenders of our union. I say it is the members' job too. You are not unimportant. ALPA is a bottom up organization. You don't take the orders. You make the orders.

It is my hope our Representatives will want to strengthen the language which governs our association, the very language which empowers them to represent us.