It's a power struggle caused by a difference in opinion between the National Officers and some members of the APA Board of Directors. It started many months ago when the APA pres Hill started public confrontations with AMR management that some on the APA board considered counterproductive. Hill considered it necessary to bring management to the negotiating table.

The working relationship between the National Officers at APA and the Board of Directors has deteriorated to the point where last fall a slim majority of the BOD passed a resolution to take away the election of the National Officers by the APA membership and instead have the NO's appointed by the BOD. That way they'd have always be speaking from the same sheet of paper and if not then the BOD would simply fire the NO's and appoint new ones.

Many APA members saw this as a power grab by a few members of the APA BOD and pushed through a grassroots effort to allow APA members to continue to elect the NO's. That vote will be sent to the membership soon.

The end result of all of this is that APA is not working for the line pilots, we are still months perhaps years away from a contract that expired in May 2008 and AMR management is sitting back laughing their asses off and splitting up piles of money that should be going into employee pockets instead of management pockets. The dysfunction at APA may be causing delays in negotiations but that's hard to prove. In reality, the NMB probably won't release us to cooling off until the economy improves and job losses aren't a problem for the politicians. The NMB is a political tool that is being used to prevent a job action that may result in more job losses. The Administration is afraid of more job losses and they control the NMB. The mess at APA is just the excuse the NMB needs to say we can't be released to cooling off.

Good luck getting back to AA. It's still an OK job although not near the compensation level I think we should be receiving.