Originally Posted by
pinseeker
We are just going to have to agree to disagree.
Status quo had been defined in court rulings as being the rules that are in effect prior to entering section 6. If you make a rule that only takes effect after you enter section 6, then that rule wasn’t the standard practice or work rule prior to entering section 6. You are arguing to place a catch 22 into the contract.
Arguing that I have to prove you wrong on this is like me saying that aliens exist and you have to prove me wrong. It’s not my responsibility to provide an alien as proof. The RLA has been around for over 100 years. Airlines have been under it for over 80 years. If it was ok to put something like you are proposing into a contract, don’t you think it would have been done by now.
As I said at the start of this post, we are going to have to agree to disagree. If you feel so strongly that you are correct, contact your LEC and tell them you would like to see that in the next contract. I wish you luck.
I just believe you are getting the definition to status quo incorrect. Applying the contract the same way it was applied before section 6 is the basic definition of status quo. So completing with something that is already in the contract, by definition, cannot violate status quo, regardless of when it takes effect. The case that Alder provided is actually the perfect example and one in which management wasn’t able to assign trips to employees during section 6 because it wasn’t normal practice before.
The other thing I said is that nothing in the RLA says what you can/cannot negotiate. And I provided the RLA to prove what I said. You are the one making a different claim, that is that even though it doesn’t say that, you are prohibited from negotiating that work rule because it violates status quo. I provided my proof of my claim. You aren’t providing any proof of your claim. The RLA is a law that only provides the way in which negotiations happen.
Like I said before, just because you may not see this in contracts (although apparently the UTU had it in their contract) doesn’t mean it cannot be negotiated. It probably means that it’s more costly than any work group has been willing to use negotiating capital for.
By the way, I have a long list of things I keep adding to, that I plan on emailing my local reps and negotiating committee when the time comes. I will add this idea. But I know that not everything in my list or any list will be successfully negotiated. These things are negotiated in priority order and only those we have enough negotiating capital to get are the ones we will get. The union email says the pilot group wants a focused negotiations. That sort of disappointing to me. So I doubt that things like scope and things like these types of work rules are going to be high enough on the priority list.