baseball

I am talking about those folks that were unemployed and who did not have a bid position or were not active employees. When the furloughed pilots were hired is immaterial. UAL decided to park the 737 which resulted in the most junior of their ranks to be furloughed 1400 deep.

If a company furloughed to 1979 hire date it's not material, evidently the company must be having some very big troubles in order to do that.

A 1997 hire working for company X that is bankrupt is clearly worse off than a 1998 hire who has never missed a day of work due to furlough.

The only reason those 1400 furloughed pilots got recalled was due to the merger.

same logic as UAL obtaining those 3 L10-11's from PAN AM. The Pan Am guys got date of Hire and UAL was livid. PO'd beyond belief. But the growth of the international pacific route system provided a windfall of over 540 pilot positions that benefited them in the near term and for the length of their careers. Totally changed the landscape. That deal created positions that never existed and would have never existed had the deal not been done.

This deal is no different. The CAL-UAL merger created positions that didn't exist and were never going to exist. This is a fact. It is really hard to disagree with this. It's common sense.

All I am saying in this: the deal created positions that did not exist. The 1400 pilots who were furloughed from UAL ( and their hire date could be whatever it was/is) were not going to be able to be recalled except for mandatory trickle retirements. No growth at all was planned or possible due to financial position and bankruptcy. The bankruptcy contract sealed that and that's no one's fault but UAL management's. The CAL deal provided a unique set of opportunities, much like the Pan Am transaction did. So, why were the Pan AM guys treated in one way by ALPA and the CAL guys treated so differently?

Again, in 2 to 3 years it solves itself, but I don't buy the whole outside the glass looking in thing. Hard for unity to happen when this sort of thing is going on. ALPA should be fairly representing everyone, not just the winners and loses it decides on. We're all paying dues, and the CAL pilots were all paying dues to ALPA, but last I checked the 1400 on furlough were not. So, in one way of looking at it, those CAL pilots who were working on the job for 10 plus years all had longer tenures in ALPA as dues paying members, comparative longevity with their respective companies as active employees and had never been furloughed or worked for a bankrupt airline.