Originally Posted by
ancman
Yet you manage to come out of the woodwork to defend ALPA every single time this topic is brought up. It’s a strange place to hang your hat. Especially without having any connection to the people involved in the deal, either directly or indirectly.
I’m a strong supporter of our union. However, they can and do make mistakes. This particular one was egregious.
Out of the woodwork? I think I comment pretty regularly.
I'm just an observer of human behavior. It's pretty easy to say "those guys suck" and "I could do better"...so that's what you hear here a lot. Folks who think we caved on this when there was a clear and significantly better path haven't shown me any reason to think SK's judgement was out to lunch. No one who thinks taking this stuff to a grievance can show me a historic grievance settlement that demonstrates we would have had a strong win on 23m7...which was rolled in with the batch size changes. The last time I thought we had a clear grievance win, the settlement paid be about half an hour of pay. Yikes.
I'd never want to commit my (or my family's) time to union work. The best I can do is pay attention to candidates running to represent me and engage them in their official role. I'm lucky enough to trust my rep, who has always been responsive and informative when I've reached out to him. I trust the way he thinks and makes decisions. I want to continue to have excellent representation, which will only happen when good people sign up to serve their constituents. I called my rep the same hour this agreement was made public (furious), and I asked questions and listened to the details. In the end, the situation was complex - as are most things folks here try to oversimplify - and I'm not certain there was low hanging fruit that the loudest complainers think was so obviously missed by SK and the scheduling committee. And as far as I know, a majority of the MEC with far more information than I have made the judgement call to support the agreement.
I'm all ears - this agreement was egresious why, exactly? What is your supporting evidence that we could have achieved significantly more, on a timeline that wouldn't have ceded significant unaccounted-for losses in pilot pay? What percentage of pilots didn't want batch limitations? (I don't know the answer but would love to). Some folks have claimed there is a sweet spot in batch sizes...but who decides what that is? Someone who needs another hour to make an airport run happen or someone who needs a day of coordination to line up a nanny?