Originally Posted by
alfaromeo
The East guys have placed way too much emphasis on the economic factors in the award, and frankly the West tries to place too much emphasis on that also.
Nicolau mentioned the financial conditions of the companies briefly. If he had truly bought off on the idea that US Airways was worthless to the merged entity and brought nothing to the merger, he would have stapled the East pilots to the bottom of the list. Right, that is what you would have expected, if the East had nothing to offer the merger they would be treated as if they were already unemployed and could be new hires at America West; stapled onto the bottom of their list.
But Nicolau didn't buy it. He recognized that both carriers needed each other. The top of the list was 500+ US Air pilots. Both Delta and Northwest and United and Continental were equal in financial health and the lists were feathered together top to bottom. If Nicolau had truly bought into the financial arguments, then why didn't he put the East pilots much further down the list. In contrast, they owned the top of the list.
So Nicolau might have stated it differently than Bloch did but you can't find the difference in how they formed the lists. No matter what you believe about the chance of US Airways liquidating in 2005, it is clear that in order to survive the airline would continue to shrink. There was a clear schedule of aircraft reductions already through the court system. Despite the attrition at US Air, there was little hope that the furloughed pilots would come back to fly in the near future; in fact it was more likely that further furloughs would have followed there. That made a difference.
I have always maintained that the East pilots blew it big time by not offering an alternative solution to Nicolau. He told them that Date of Hire (LOS) was not fair and the East would not get it. He gave them three weeks to think about it and then come back. Instead of making a tough call for their pilots and thinking of a Plan B, the East MEC punted and just stuck with their politically popular position. If you don't want to leave your fate to the gods, then figure out what you want it to be and make it happen. If you just stamp your feet and leave it up to the arbitrator, then you deserve anything that comes out of that process.
The United MEC faced similar problems in their integration. Instead of making a chest thumping, politically popular position like Date of Hire, they came up with a Plan B for the arbitrators. Not only that, but they showed how their proposal could be modified if the arbitrators didn't like their initial proposal. That was a courageous thing to do and it paid off for them. It would have been easy for them to pound their chests and then blame it on the arbitrators. Instead, they made the tough choice and represented their pilots much, much, much better than the East MEC. That is the true lesson to learn here. If you leave it up to the arbitrator to come up with a new solution, then be prepared to live with whatever happens. Don't quit in the middle of the game, no matter how easy that makes life for you in the short term. Long term, the East has paid for their MEC's failures.
The only way you can come up with any logic for his award is to figure he was basing it on the financial situation. But you are correct, SOME parts of his award go against that theory. The east got the top of the list. He didn't consider the aircraft on order. But, if he didn't use financial consideration, why the massive windfalls? If the top 15-20% of our list went on top of the new list, shouldn't that have pulled the rest of up? It didn't, I ended up at pretty much the same relative position, and my relative position on the east included an airline with widebodies. Very soon after the Nic came out, my relative position would have dropped, relative to my unmerged, while those on the bottom half of the west would have a rapid increase. Did you read the diatribe from the west guy to Captain Hale? I happen to have his seniority % moving forward. Unmerged he was looking at retiring at about 13%-at an airline with no widebodies. With the Nic he would make it to 3%. With DOH-6%! So no matter what, the west guys were going to improve while we moved backwards. If the same had happened at DL, you guys would have blown up.
You make assumptions about US that you are in no position to make. You weren't here and you obviously have missed a lot. Yes, we were scheduled to lose more aircraft(and did-about 50 vs. 20 on the west) to get the merger done. But go back and look at the staffing number in the Nicolau Award. Did you ever do the math on that and ask why the west had so many more pilots per aircraft? The answer is that we were massively understaffed(again to get the merger done). We parked 50+ aircraft and STILL brought back 300 formerly furloughed pilots. How was that? Charity? No, return to proper staffing, attrition and some increase in management pilots and IRO staffing for more international flying that went east.
There were other offers for US, but Lakefield saw the AWA merger as best for everyone. That's why he worked to make that happen and why our LOA 93 was patterned after the AW contract. We don't know what have happened absent the merger.
It's pretty clear that the east merger committee/MEC blew it, but my question is why was it up to them? Why does Nicolou get off the hook? We had already shown that we(the west proposal was no where near fair) couldn't come up with a solution, and he was tasked with coming up with a FAIR one. If there could have been a more fair with with east input, there should have been one available without them. At that point, that was HIS job. FAIL.
Now, want to answer my other questions? I thought you were a west guy because of the passion you have when you write about this. You write as if you have a personal connection. What is it?