Another point to consider: ALPA merger policy partially defines DOH as being in the company payroll system. It says nothing about actually BEING PAID. From day one we filled out all of our employment verification paperwork and received an employee number. Is it unreasonable to assume that all this information wouldn't be entered into the payroll system right from the start, but that they obviously wouldn't cut checks until we passed our checkride? Or for people hired after 2006 we also got paid from day one as well. So using our class start date as our ALPA merger policy DOH is completely reasonable.