Originally Posted by
LeineLodge
My apologies. I made the leap when that's not what you were talking about. I've been having the DPA discussion a little too often lately huh? My bad.
While there is a relationship between our MEC (and all MEC's) and National, we do not take direction from them. There was a large shift (although it may have been subtle to the average pilot) when the new administration took office in January. It signaled, IMO, a shift in direction based on the reps displeasure with how C2012 went down.
You'll notice a change in the communication that's coming out since KR took over - and while you probably won't see the contract survey results anytime soon, there is a strong push from the very top of the Delta MEC to be more inclusive and transparent. The PUB program is a perfect example of this. Even in this "downtime" your MEC is going out on the road frequently and has visited every single base, to collect your feedback. I'm confident that capn's experience at the PUB was an outlier, and not the norm. It may have been 1 ALPA guy having a bad day - we're human.
I have actually noticed very little interference from National in the several years I've been doing this stuff. For the most part, we call them when we need something. They exist to support us, and it works that way 99% of the time. Lee Moak does not call down to ATL and tell us how things should be.
Understood. I'm also a junior guy, which is why I'm so invested in where this thing is going. We all want the same thing. It just boils down to (usually) a very small difference in opinion of how to get there.
No apology needed. I was making a broad statement rather than a direct rebuttal. The discussion tends to devolve rather quickly when talking about union politics.
All good info from your post, and to just reiterate my opinion is only based on "my perception" of how things seem to play out. The C2012 vote seemed to place an inordinate amount of pressure from both our union and management. The perception seemed to be that both sides were pushing identical facts, whereas a more transparent pros versus cons comparison would have been more palatable.
You say things have changed and we will see the inference from those changes evident in future communications. Until then we'll all just have to wait and see how some of our significant concerns will play out in the short/long term.
I'd like to see both DPA and ALPA strengthen their hand so as to provide two strong representational options to our group in the event a representational vote ever occurs. DPA by far has a lot more legwork to do as they have publicised some scathing vitriol against ALPA and have provided nothing more than fear mongering.