Pre-merger compensation is not a factor in integration. Never has been used in any arbitration and not in the current policy. Plus it was proven that the UAL compensation (payrates + benefits) were slightly more for every UAL fleet seat compared to CAL. Yes I know the CAL side ONLY wants to look at hourly rates and ignore the rest of the package. Also historically, CAL payrates were far below UAL payrates.

There aren't "snapshots" being used. Both sides agreed in the Merger Protocol Agreement that the "Merger Acquisition Date" is the "date the merger is publicly announced".

Until that happened, there COULDN'T BE JOINT CONTRACT NEGOTIATION. So you're trying to say that the MAD was 2013, but the JOINT exhibit that CAL and UAL MECs both signed say that AFTER MAD the parties will begin to negotiate a JOINT CONTRACT. Here's the actual language "Within ten days following MAD, the UAL and CAL MECs shall each designate three Negotiating Committee members to jointly negotiate transition agreements, if appropriate, and a JCBA.

Well since we had a JCBA agreed to by the parties in June 2012 and FULLY RATIFIED in Dec 2012, there is no way that somehow in 2013 we still just are getting to the MAD date because we couldn't have started the JCBA negotiations until AFTER that date.

So the process agreement date was May 17th, 2010 and SIGNED by both parties agreeing to this. Then after seeing what kind of changes there were post-merger, the CAL side tried to make a case for a 2013 MAD.

So the date really isn't debatable. Its CONTRACTUAL, and was already decided by the parties.

I totally get it. You agree to 2010 MAD, then after a few years of seeing the single management team favor one side of the airline, stall and try to claim 2013 as the Merger date.