Originally Posted by
LAX Pilot
United didn't "buy" CAL.
It was a marriage.
United was the man, which is why CAL was forced to take on his name. If CAL has been the man we'd be called Continental, but we're not. We're United.
CAL was the woman. Lots of things point to this.
1) CAL was "expecting". They were "expecting" to staple about 3,000 United pilots to the bottom of the list. They were also "expecting" to keep getting all of the upgrades for the near future, but unfortunately the man stepped in and stopped all that.
2) CAL was playing "hard to get". Like "hard to get" the dates their pilots actually started at mainline. And "hard to get" them to negotiate the contract in a timely manner without ridiculous self SLI helping elements.
3) CAL was bad at math. Like a 747 should pay the same as a 767 even though one weighs almost twice as much at takeoff as the other one. Or one payrate for one type of 757 and another one for a different type of 757.
4) CAL was unpredictable like a woman. Hiring pilots, then furloughing pilots, then hiring pilots again.
5) CAL was spending money it didn't have. CAL couldn't resist the shiny new airplanes, and decided to go out to the mall and buy a bunch of new planes and then figure out later how to pay for them all.
6) CAL asked "Does this hat make me look fat?" The man answered "No honey, it just makes all your other clothes look too small".
So its very clear that CAL wasn't bought by UAL. instead it was a marriage and like any good marriage the man is now wishing he'd have married that US Air chick instead.
I guess this was an attempt at humor. Don't quit your day job as its neither witty or funny.
It's interesting that most people show the sign of a good SLI is both sides seem ****ed at the SLI, however that hasn't happened here. Almost no one in the bottom half of the CAL list thinks the SLI is fair, but obviously we're biased.
On the other hand, most the UAL bottom guys and especially the furloughs think its fair, since the furloughs didn't get stapled. I talked to a handful of UAL pilots who had no expectations and expected to get stapled, which I would argue most people would have guessed if betting money. The only arguments I hear about ****ed off people are ones that are upset they are next to a guy who was hired 5-10 years after them, but that same person beside them on the list had a much better seniority at his/her respective company and much greater bidding power.
I don't argue that our MC did a good job. I saw our argument, and thought it was total BS and would never fly. I wasn't about to come on the APC and post something stupid as we saw forum posts used as evidence in the SLI. Why would CAL guys cut their own MC off at the knees by stating that their proposal of stapling the bottom 3000 was stupid in front of everyone. I can say behind closed doors we did say that too each other.
Everyone knew that the CAL argument was BS (except maybe our MC). They went all in with a pocket queens after "the turn". The UAL committee was holding pocket twos and then when the "river" showed up as a two, CAL lost and UAL had 3 of a kind.
The unknown card in this deck here was the interpretation of "longevity". UAL defined it one way, CAL defined it another, and ALPA let the arbitrator decide, which is BS.
Had ALPA defined longevity (which it didn't since chances are CAL would have decerted ALPA with the UAL definition of longevity) when it changed the policy, I can assure you the strategy the CAL MC took would have been a lot different. The CAL MC chairman was one of two that re-wrote the policy, but when time came to defining the term, the arbitrator thought that the guy who wrote the policy was wrong.