Originally Posted by
gloopy
While we *shouldn't* have to do it, we have to do it. And its always going to be that way because a union should never be able to shirk its share of responsibility of contract enforcement.
Stop it with the petty dues refund nonsense and plow all that money into I.T. and manual contract enforcement on our end. Then when we catch and recover more money, and we will, that money will be subject to regular dues anyway. Once we get to 100% automated contractual enforcement, only then should we play footsie with meaningless dues refunds.
So this is one of those things that sounds like a great idea, so I ran it down with my reps. Right now they are barely breaking even with scheduling committee folks. That means just keeping the same number of volunteers they have. It takes a lot of spool up a volunteer to do scheduling work, about six months to do even the basics. Their problem is no one wants to do it, because you can't do premium flying while on ALPA leave. Nobody wants to miss out on the rain of cash. Plus upgrades. Everyone wants to grab that quick upgrade or go to a larger ac, and that knocks you out of the box for several months.
Ok, I say, hire staff, not pilots. This is a bookeeping job. Well, not so fast. It's also a pretty complicated subject that has to be done right, otherwise you magnify the workload. The problem is that they've had open, funded staff positions at the office for months, and they can't find people to do the job. Apparently an ALPA staff job is a union job, and pays good pay and benefits, but no one want's to do it.
This isn't a money issue, and the SC already gets the largest budget out of all the committees. If you have a magic wand that make pilots volunteer or people sign up for a job, then I urge you to reach out to your reps so they can waive it around.
The IT thing is way more complicated, but the new contract is progressing with the automation piece which we didn't have before.