It's actually been pretty quiet the last couple of days...

 

If you had ALPA at a regional, your preception of ALPA as a whole is a little skewed. I came from an ALPA regional as well and hated them. But you have to understand the amount of money a regional ALPA versus a major one get in dues. And then consider that half the regionals guys are just getting the resume boost unfortunately and really don’t care enough to do much. And while National should fight harder for the interest of all pilot groups, pilots with every airline would be up in arms if they were funding the regionals pretty heavily. Just the ugly truth about it. National does share its resources still, but the money just isn’t there for lower paying ALPA airlines to get more than they are right now.

 

I always love it when "National should fight harder" for the interests of the RJ contract carriers.... How should they do that when each MEC is supposed to "fight" for itself. Bottom line, without scope (of which the contract "regional" carriers have NONE) you really have no leverage with which to negotiate/demand anything.
What can NATIONAL ALPA do besides refuse to endorse any particular contract deal? If the individual MEC's agree (for whatever reason/interest they have), what is national to do..... pull their union certification? To what end? All National can do is pretty much what they do now... provide info and resources for the contract carrier pilots with no scope the info and support to fight for themselves, but without scope, history has shown that any one contract carrier that gets out over it's skis to far has just set in motion the beginning of their demise.

 

ALPA National can (should) refuse to let one MEC whipsaw the others. Literally standing there and celebrating one MEC choosing to undercut the others to get planes, or actively trying to intimidate an MEC to “play ball” with management, is NOT what ALPA was founded to accomplish.

 

Exactly. Every time ALPO allows another whipsaw at the RJ level, they just lower the bar another notch for the whole piloting profession, making it cheaper and increasing managements incentive to outsource more and more flying to the “RJ” operators.
I’m sick of this “mainline ALPA is different” crap. ALPA National is one organization and one of the National officers is a regional pilot. The fact that they choose to disregard a whole segment of their dues paying membership tells me all I need to know about those crooked scumbags. I want nothing to do with that organization ever again.
ALPA will make no difference here at AA. The same guys are going to be running the show. It’ll just be under a different name, and our dues money (likely more than we’re paying now) will just go into the giant ALPA money pit and contribute to the unbelievable waste that occurs at ALPA National in Herndon.

 

AA has many more RJs than delta or United and a pilot contract that is vastly inferior in compensation and work rules. We also have fewer pilots to fly more airplanes than delta. Sounds like we are trailing in every aspect. Thank god we don’t have ALPA. (Sarcasm intended).

 

United 44%
American 39%
Delta 34%

Some quick numbers of regional feed percentage of total fleet.

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Agreed we are trailing in every aspect. However, ALPA allowed the biggest ****show race to the bottom in recent memory among our wholly owned regionals making them dirt cheap and prime to put all that flying into. Getting ALPA on property here will do little to fix our problems if it’s the same people with the same attitudes running the union. Plenty more of our money will go into the big bloated bureaucracy of ALPA though.

 

I also don’t think you understand how ALPA works. National HQ doesn’t write out the contract in behalf of the airlines MEC, it’s the other way around. If Delta or United ratifies a lousy contract ALPA will still sign off on it. There is no muscle flexing from HQ. Never in a million years would ALPA have pilots from all of its carriers put pressure on anyone else to leverage a good contract. Informational picketing? Scary. Each MEC is in it for themselves and ALPA just collects the money.


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I understand perfectly how ALPA works. You just explained EXACTLY why ALPA is worthless. We’re on our own anyway, so we might as well keep our own money and fight for ourselves.

IF ALPA worked differently, and IF they could get all members from all pilot groups to work together to raise the bar at the same time, there would be some advantage. As of now, it’s just a big bloated organization that makes millions off of the backs of its members while providing negligible benefit.