Sleepy...appreciate your feedback and standing by your decision. Since ALPA has for years been opposed to the Age 60 increase for "safety reasons", how can they oppose more stringent physical testing for those over 65 if this legislation comes to be allowing Age 65 becoming the standard? That makes no sense at all. Also; how and why can ALPA FDX justify not only going against what would probably be an overwhelming majority of their own pilots but ALPA National as well?
It is not practical to cite previous agreements that use the possibly soon outdated age of 60 to justify retroactivity. Age 60 was the Law of the Land when pilots understood it was their time to either retire or go to the back seat; with no expectation of possibly moving back to the front seat. As such our bylaws reflected the lack of difference between Age 60, seniority and moving to the back seat. They moved to the back seat, lost their "front seat seniority" and began using an FE seniority number. It is disingenuine for FDX ALPA to fight this fight for those in the back seat who are over 60 and not for those who retired upon reaching 60 who now may want to come back to the front seat.
The only way to get the membership to not feel completely left out of this process is to put the whole retroactivity question to a polling of the entire membership. If that doesn't happen, our union leaders will have permanently lost not just the support of a large numbers of their members but; many careers will be damaged without pilots having been given the opportunity to address the issue which caused the damage.
The generated sense of panic that ALPA may have lost control of this issue is not valid. The NPRM vs Congressional Law process has always and always will take longer than ALPA FDX is perpetuating right now. What makes them think this one issue will move to the front of the line that includes funding the war in Iraq et al that continues to drag on?
Retroactivity should be put to a vote..period.