Originally Posted by
Adlerdriver
If by "we" you mean ALPA, I say again, no. It's not our union's job to rat out its members to the company. Nothing these pilots are doing is specifically prohibited in our contract or any company rules of which I'm aware. Are they violating the spirit of some of the provisions? (recycling OTP or using a collective effort to grab trips and re-distribute them within their pack) - Absolutely. But that's a vague standard that clearly the company is not interested in using to curtail this activity. An individual getting insider information from schedulers, especially if there's tangible favors involved, is probably crossing a line the company would be far less tolerant of. But proving that is probably not worth the potential fallout in terms of legal, justifiable methods of investigating that behavior versus benefit.
You're naive if you think they aren't fully aware of what's going on. The trips are getting flown and really, that's all that matters to them in the end. If ALPA decides to make this stop, it has to be done using negotiated language that defines acceptable limits. Pro-standards and our union leadership then have firm ground to stand on to police our own without getting management involved. It's a slippery slope when our own union starts getting involved in compiling data on its members for use by the company. I really don't think we want to go that direction, IMO.
I don’t think something has to violate the contract for the union to do something about it if the membership believes the behavior is a detriment to the membership. Anyway, not that big of a deal to me either way. Like I said, I can count the number of times on my hands that I’ve picked up a trip. I was just suggesting a possible solution seeing that this BOT issue can only be dealt with by or with management. I certainly agree it can be dealt with by negotiating something that can be used to police it but inevitable it’s going to require a software upgrade to prevent a BOT from doing its thing. Also, we don’t have to be in section 6 to negotiate something. ALPA and management can negotiate this right now if they wanted to. However it’s done, if pilots feel it’s an issue, it needs to be resolved and it can only be done with the help of management.