Well you aren’t wrong though it would be fair to point out that the anomaly of very junior captains preceded this contract, so it would probably be more accurate to say those provisions in the contract became a contributing factor to the problem rather than the sole cause.

My point was that making furloughs contractually expensive & inefficient is not about punishing the company but creating disincentives that protect pilots. As to the initial point of the Pandemic LOA, there were many of us who felt “Why have these codified disincentives if we’re just going to roll over & provide relief for the company as soon as they might actually be put to use? And if the company knows we’ll allow exceptions for them, doesn’t that just incentivize them to threaten furloughs more frequently rather than less?” For us, it felt like the union was doing more to work on the company’s behalf than the pilots’. Though the furlough deal did pass by popular approval, the TUMI contract shortly thereafter underscored to many more pilots the idea that our union’s relationship with the company had become imbalanced. It certainly felt in retrospect that the union’s involvement in the Pandemic LOA may have been more about representing the company’s interests than we considered at the time.

Now, it is true that the feds covered the lion’s share of the pay we ceded in that deal & we walked away from it w/ no scars & first class DHs. So if the argument is that the gamble paid off, I can’t really refute that. But knowing everything we know now about that era of our union leadership, to claim- as the OP does- that opposing the LOA or the TUMI contract would disqualify a person from representing UAL pilots is laughable.

& in general we should all be very wary anytime the company says “We need you to agree to something outside of your contract to better serve your interests.”