Purple,

This should be clear among any one of us who are members in a union. A union's job is like the job of your attorney. Your attorney's job is to get you out of trouble. Even if the attorney knows you are guilty as sin, it is their job to advocate for you. We could not trust a union Rep, or attorney, if we feared they would make a judgement call and throw us under the bus. It is better that a member always knows where their union stands.

Every member, every represented pilot, should feel they can be honest with their representatives (and if you're in trouble they can serve you better when they know the truth) and that those representatives will act with the pilot's best interest foremost. That's the definition of a "fiduciary duty" and our union has that duty in favor of it's pilots.

Hope it is clear why the DPA's proposed action bothers me. ... Pilots come to them, confess to an error, and the DPA wants to hang 'em.

If the DPA wanted to score points, this would have been an opportunity to take the moral high ground to state "yes, some enthusiastic ALPA supporters did XXX to our web site. They apologized and we are working with them because first and foremost they are Delta pilots. If you choose our representation we will work for you ... (blah blah)"

I've been a vocal advocate for ALPA. Does this mean if I filed an ASAP for a deviation the DPA would check out my name and reply "FO Bucking deviated from his clearance, thus violating Federal Regulation. We have reported the matter to the FAA and sought appropriate enforcement action."

I don't think that's what you, or anyone, wants.