Dry/Wet Lease
1. The Company will not enter into any dry/wet lease agreement, or
contract with or for any other carrier or entities (government,
military or commercial) without mutual agreement with the Union.
a. No pilot within the bargaining unit will be reduced in status or
lose any income or employee benefits while discussions are
taking place.
b. The Union will not disagree to a dry lease when such dry
lease is for the sole purpose of leasing out excess aircraft
owned or leased by the Company. No aircraft dry leased to
another carrier or entity will be operated into or out of any
cities where the Company operates. Such dry lease will not
result in the reduction in status or the furlough of any
Chautauqua Pilot in cases where the dry lease provides a
profit to the Company. At the request of the Union it may
review the actual dry lease documents.
The planes were already parked and tied down. The way I've read the contract is that the company is not reducing the status of any pilot or furloughing anyone additional over this. Therefore it's allowed per the CBA.
Now the real question should be when these talks started. Now even if I were a bad lawyer, which would still be a leg up from Gene, I'd make the argument that since the furloughs were not yet effective at the time of the agreement that the leasing of these planes to someone other than RAH pilots did in fact lead to more furloughs that wouldn't have initially existed had the planes been flown by RAH pilots.