Alliance say...No the union has no vote in that.

But, the scope language in existing book was rock solid. Management tried several times to get around it. Each time, like 5 times, the union prevailed. Finally, management disguised an LOA as a furlough mitigation LOA and in the reading of it, it was actually a joint venture LOA. The MEC voted it down twice. A year later, the merger was announced.

If (and a big if), but if management negotiated a joint venture flying agreement prior to the finalization of any merger with UAL, then I think that's a violation of the CAL scope clause. If any JV flying was done, or negotiated while CAL pilots were flying under the status quo, I would have a problem with that. I would also have a problem with those agreements if they remained in place, up to and including present day.

JV flying is different than code-sharing. The differences may be subtle now as things tend to get watered down. Truly, management wants the pilots to just mind their P's and Q's, but this entire issue is pretty darn important. Who knows, we may be one day enslaving ourselves to the ME3. We will need stronger language in the future.

I was never a fan of outsourcing our flying. You really can't scrutinize the books, the operations, and the standards of those you do business with that are over-seas. Moreover, what's to stop management from shifting international flying to lower priced international labor flying their airplanes on our routes and just calling it network sharing, joint venture flying, or code sharing? I think it should be watched very closely.