I'll take a stab at it. Big picture is that because it's in the best interest of both ALPA(National/MEC level) and the company. The company is presently overstaffed in their opinion(the one that counts) particularly in the 727 and DC-10. Neither one of those aircraft have had primary vacancies posted for quite some time and will likely never see them again. So we are looking at secondaries and excesses on those planes. Like every other posting lately, we'll see the 'at this time we are anticipating reductions in the 727 and DC-10 positions' line. Let's say that because of this FDA mess, junior 727 FO's and SO's don't bid off the plane b/c they want to stay stateside. The company then will just excess people off of the 727 and DC-10. In the first excess round, the junior folks hired the last 2 years or so who don't wish to go to an FDA will put down ANC MD or MEM A300. In a forced displacement scenario, I expect that the company will flatten or zero out growth on the widebodies in MEM, ANC and LAX. So not everyone will be able to get ANC or MEM 300 and there would be secondary excesses that would force the purple nuggets and the bottom A300 guys off the last posting into excess as well. At this point the only thing that their seniority could hold beyond the FDA's is the 727 panel. However that is getting stocked up with over 60 guys and age 65 won't be settled before the next bid.

So now they are people without a home, who cannot be contractually forced to bid a FDA. Normally the answer would be to hire, but this seems a touch unrealistic in an overstaffed situation . We are basically asking the company to hire people when they already have the people because we (rightfully) don't want to go to these FDA's. I don't see that happening, so they pull out the trump card: furlough. Doesn't mean it will happen or that it makes sense, but the threat of it will cause the MEC to do something. Either they will present us with situation and let us make the call on whether or not to voluntarily change our bids or they make a judgement call and do it for us. I haven't seen our bylaws on this, but most people are unaware that membership ratification isn't necessary for anything other than cba's unless otherwise codified somewhere in the individual airlines MEC bylaws. I've seen pretty big $$$ amendments and deals go down via MEC approval vs. the pilots basically because those MEC's thought they were saving the pilots from themselves. We can go round and round about whether that is right or not, especially in light of what just happened with Age 65, but the fact remains it can happen. I believe UsAir's MEC approved a concessionary deal around the time of their 2nd bk without a vote. United ALPA approved a domestic codeshare and a retirement allocation package without memrat. I'm not sure, but I think Delta's retread Captain deal didn't go through memrat either. Beyond the potential furlough implications, I just cannot see this MEC or ALPA Natl allowing us to set up a situation where foreign pilots could end up with those jobs and force an international scope test. Throw rocks at the wall if you like, but they aren't letting that happen. I'm sure someone will come in and tighten up what I said, but the basic jist of it is between ALPA and the company, some of us are going there bid or no bid. I think the LOA is being offered to maintain system integrity because there would no doubt be operational issues if they just send us over there with nothing.