Originally Posted by
FangsF15
To add to this excellent recap, In C15 and before, there was a provision whereby ALPA (the scheduling committee chair?) had a 'vote' in their value and offering of a SIL. They had traditionally been 55 hours, but sometime well before Covid the company unilaterally decided to offer them for less without consultation as I recall. 40 hours maybe? I can't remember the specifics, but the result was that ALPA exercised an option to "pull down" SIL's altogether IAW a clause in the contract.
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I think it even dipped down into the 20s, with the then-scheduling committee chairman (same guy who permitted ARCOS without a peep to the MEC) approving that ridiculously low number without consulting the MEC.
So the MEC pulled down SILs, and eventually canned that scheduling committee chair. There's probably a lesson in there for scheduling committee chairmen who make side deals with mgmt without the MEC's input (see also, minimum turn time dealmaking). I asked my rep about that, and he's NOT HAPPY with the way that went down.
Anyway, as you said, the MEC negotiated an LOA in good faith for SILs with good ol' Gummer. Was he the fall guy, or was he just letting Bastian be the bad cop?
Doesn't matter. If he negotiated something, shook hands with his ALPA counterpart, and then had to come back to the table on Monday to renege for any reason whatsoever, he should have resigned on the spot. It doesn't matter what the stews got. Instead, he looked like a useful idiot and meat puppet for Bastian. Expect more of the same.