This is an interesting, thought-provoking assertion. I’d like to take a crack at analyzing it.

Before diving in to the central theme, may I say there is a possibility that beginning the debate with the bit about this being “why pilots never get anywhere,” could be off-putting and set the person with whom you wish to engage in meaningful discourse on the defensive. I believe the statement is provably false and it’s use, even as hyperbole or, more likely, an expression of frustration towards those with whom you disagree, is far more likely to destroy than encourage future cooperation and/or compromise.

Nevertheless, I see great merit in your argument that employment is an agreement, a contract, if you will, between the employer and the employee. As you say, the company is responsible for adhering to this agreement. While not directly mentioned in your post, there is, of course, responsibility on the part of the employee to do the same.

I do, however, believe you overstated the employer’s responsibility when you asserted they must “keep [employees] whole.” It is true that, in accordance with contractually-enumerated responsibilities, the employer must perform his duties. However, the company also has the contractual right to use furloughs to manage overmanning, even if the company’s own policies and decisions caused the overmanning situation.

In so far as any employee remains employed (i.e., not furloughed) he must be “made whole” by contractually-required wages and other rights and privileges. If he is no longer employed, the company has no responsibilities to him whatsoever.

In our present circumstance, the company has stated they are facing an overmanning situation and announced their intention to recover the associated costs via furlough, which is
absolutely their right. In fact, it is their only contractually-guaranteed remedy for solving overmanning, especially considering VSP, ExTO, and ETO are all extra-contractual programs that are neither guaranteed nor codified anywhere save an online FAQ document that may be changed at the will of the company with no remedy for employees whatsoever.

That brings us to the company’s efforts to modify the existing contract. Their argument is reasonable on its face; they have too many employees, which is causing them to expend financial resources they no longer wish to expend, so they will either use their power to furlough to save the money, or the association can agree to contract modifications (i.e., concessions) that save the company an equivalent amount of money. In the latter case, the company, having saved the requisite number of dollars, would no longer have to furlough pilots.

The problem with these efforts is that the association is not agreeable to any contract-modification proposal the company has suggested, and the company is not agreeable to any proposal the association has proffered, even though several of SWAPA’s proposals have allegedly been proven to save the requisite dollar amounts. Simply put, the company wants to leverage potentially-unemployed pilots for dollars and the introduction of FM language to the contract umbrella. SWAPA wants to leverage contractual modifications to prevent potentially-unemployed pilots from becoming actually unemployed. In both cases, the commodity being negotiated is pilot jobs.

The company only has a contractual duty to current employees. Furloughed pilots are not employees. Once furloughs are executed, beyond furlough pay and contractual recall rights, the company’s legal and moral
responsibility to the individual is terminated. Harsh but true.

SWAPA, however, has a legal and moral obligation to its entire membership that arguably continues after the company terminates its association with the furloughed pilot. At the very least, SWAPA has a duty to protect its membership by exhausting all efforts to avoid furloughs in the first place. Herein lies the rub...the $220M question: should SWAPA trade concessions to keep pilots paid and insured?

The argument you were countering in your post is that the association can achieve its goal of keeping pilots paid and insured via a SWAPA-managed assessment of actively-flying pilots. You assert this is the company’s responsibility, but in the event pilots are furloughed, it’s not their responsibility at all.

However, since the commodity being negotiated is pilot jobs and those jobs serve the purpose of paying and insuring pilots and their families, and since the company is using those pilots as a bargaining chip to gain an FM foothold in our contract, and since none of us seems to want that, what if we made pilot jobs a non-commodity? What if SWAPA were to guarantee the pay and insurance without conceding anything to the company?

Some would say we’d be solving the company’s problem. I believe they’d be wrong. The company’s problem is overmanning. They can solve it via furlough anytime they want. The company’s desire is FM language and, possibly, a pay cut that outlasts economic downturn and, possibly, a pay cut that further affects the heroes who participate in ExTO and ETO.

While [way] overly simplified, I believe we can characterize the situation in the following two ways: we can ensure our brothers and sisters are paid and insured by conceding money and terms to the company per their [highly-undesirable] request or we can self-help by having SWAPA manage this program of payment and insurance via internal assessment and management. If the company, not the NC, not the pilots, but the company decides to exercise its contractual right to furlough, I’m for the latter.