Originally Posted by
full of luv
Well if the VA MEC doesn't offer straight relative position, and the ALK MEC doesn't offer straight DOH, I'd be shocked. That would be like a lawyer going to court and offering to concede half the case to the court.
If ALPA were smart they'd make future mergers "baseball style" arbitrations, (wherein each party puts forth an integration and the mediator just picks one or the other, no changes) that would force both sides to make strategic concessions in their own proposals before presenting to a negotiator for fear of getting put out to pasture by the mediator. Then each sides MEC would at least set a reasonable expectation in their membership.
The way it works now, each side shoots for the moon and tries to justify their position and it serves to pit the two groups at odds for years to come.
That's not actually correct. Some groups do shoot for the moon but they get shot down instead. CAL in the CAL/UAL merger, US Air in the AWA/US merger as examples.
The arbitrators do not choose one side or the other. They look at the proposal, the facts of the situation and the proposed seniority methodology and they make their decision based on that. The actual seniority list is based on the methodology that the arbitrator decides fits the situation.
You are correct in that expectations can be raised when there is no conceivable way that they can be met. Arrogance and ignorance is a bad combination in a SLI. I've seen it first hand. But the butthurt from a perceived injustice won't last forever unless there is a methodology that perpetuates a split in the pilot groups. NWA/Republic is probably the poster child for that. Or the Air Tran/SWA hammer method of seniority integration. Once the groups are combined and people are free to bid wherever they want using the SLI that is arbitrated then people will lose the hostility. Keeping groups separate is what breeds hostility.