Originally Posted by
pitchtrim
They were already driving people back and forth from Mke and Ord. United is wierd with DH's and positive space to work after the Asian guy got dragged off the plane. If they can't DH me then that's their problem, I still get paid.
The thing is under the old contract, a contract minded pilot who didn’t desperately need to get home could have made the company keep them ‘on the clock’ so to speak out of domicile (including hotels) until they could get a flight DH. That could get expensive if UA won’t give them seats.
UA being weird about DH because of the good doctor incident is no reason for us to give up our DH language. Only if it really costs (delayed/cancelled flights/keeping pilots out of domicile for extended periods) AWAC and UA will we get back reasonable operational deadhead policies. This TA is rolling over and letting UA take all they want (including removing Positive Space for DH if they so choose).
I would much prefer to continue to educate our current pilots of existing contract language and grieve it when the company ignores it than to give up and give the company language that matches current non-contractual practice and let’s them out of the box that they’ve put themselves in with UAL. This is the kind of thing that could give the pilot group leverage if 1) we could act collectively and 2) we had folks who wanted to fight the fight in the MEC/LECs/ALPA/etc.
Just like the surface DH from heavy checks/paint — if it isn’t contractual not flying those trips and making them cover them with non-union (pt 91/management/etc) pilots is leverage. We need to use these items of leverage.
Sadly (and I’ll admit that I wasn’t a fan of this contract from the beginning) as I dig down into it there are too many instances where the pilots give away things that the company really needs/routinely does that currently are in violation of the contract without extracting much (if anything) from the company in return.