Originally Posted by
SEPfield
ALPA has just informed us and the company that the Chief Pilot can violate the contract at will.
“A flight assignment given to a ready reserve pilot will depart within the ready reserve period.”
This is not an ambiguous sentence, it is black and white. It does not have a caveat that states "unless the chief pilot orders it"
While this particular issue may not affect most of you, consider the precedent it is setting. How many other provisions of the contract can be over ridden by the chief pilots order? What is the point of having a legal binding contract if it can just be rendered null and void by a chief pilot?
Laws are ofter determined by precedent and this is a very dangerous one
Except there's a very clear difference between law and the CBA. The underlying legal principle involved is "fly now, grieve later." The underlying philosophy of the RLA is to keep commerce moving. Codifying the ability of an employee to bring a halt to commerce simply by question provisions of the contract is pretty antithetical to that.
While you and I also both agree that the CP was wrong, it's also within the company's prerogative to discipline should they feel the need. So instead of a possible termination and subsequent grievance for insubordination, we instead have a grievance for a contract violation. In the first case the pilots involved are without an income until settlement of the grievance, in the latter case the pilots can continue to earn an income and reap the benefits of a settlement later.
I'm not saying the company would absolutely terminate in an above hypothetical case (they probably wouldn't), but what I am saying is that TR advocated a conservative course of action that could set the pilot group up for a bigger win later on.