Originally Posted by
TheManager
ALPA brings most of this on themselves. While the other groups that represent airline employees are taking action and communicating, Alpa is....not. Unfortunately that is the norm for them whether at the MEC level or most noticeably at the National level.
Even if they had sent an email, robo call, anything along the lines of "we are working with folks in DC so please sit on your hands and we will be back to you with details in ( fill in the time frame)" they would be ahead.
Communicating effectively is a basic and critical fundamental for any orgnaization, corporation, or relationship. To communicate effectively, information has to be able to travel up and down, be received and then be aknowledged.
When people and organizations in the chain of communication start looking at the others within the group with contempt, game over. ALPA won't survive in its current state if they do not address this.
Interesting... While I tire of Manager's attempt to stick the occasional "FUD" in here, and while I don't see eye-to-eye with him on DPA, I certainly can't find fault with what he wrote above.
Alfa needs to understand that the tragedy here is that any good work done by ALPA is overshadowed by a poor communications effort. ALPA doesn't deserve straight A's if it turns in all its' homework on time, but fails "Relate to the Pilots Well 101". It doesn't actually matter if we're doing good work and having more influence than CAPA, if we're losing the group along the way. And of course, we've been down this "influence and impact" road before, when Prater forced his Age 65 agenda through. That has obliterated his reputation, but it's also left a bad taste in everyone's mouth about the manner in which our legislative and lobbying efforts are framed. Add that to the fact that we have a comm effort that seems to be 95% geared towards reactive forum battles, rather than proactive communications, and ALPA ends up looking completely out of touch.
Alfa is correct that the forum doesn't
exactly represent the pilots, but the problem is that the pilot group ebbs and flows towards and away from the radicals. In this case, the area in which people like Carl, Manager and 88 Driver and I agree, is that the MEC, and Prater, are not relating to the pilot group well. Where we differ is that I question the purpose for which they would like to exploit the gap between the piltos and the MEC. But trying to dismiss the divide by assigning it to forum radicals, while convenient, would also be an epic failure.
When you're perceived as being out of touch by your constituents, you don't blame the constituents, no matter how unreasonable they might be: you find a way to get the message across.