Oh so you hate your fellow pilots, cool

 

"Find another job". Yeah no problem. There's 100k jobs all over the place.. I'm willing to accept less, but so far, nationwide 2 job offers. Both are ****. I'm willing to move. 2 degrees. I'm all about the American dream and picking myself up, right now, the job market sucks.

 

And ATC in the US would be....?

 

this guy is silencing dissenting opinions just like a leftist!

 

The civil service is very socialistic in outlook and inherent nature. I've said many times before that government employees should not be allowed unions, or at least not the kind with any self-help authority. Civil service is about *service*, not self-help... if the gov doesn't pay enough, market forces will fix that.

In private sector everybody is in it to make money, and unions came about as an obvious, necessary foil to the abuses of the lopsided power balance between workers and management. Unions are largely OBE in the modern white-collar world, since workers have access to information and mobility necessary to freely follow market forces. They are still relevant in professions (mostly blue, a few white collar) which are seniority based, since we have no mobility once locked into a seniority system.

 

Is your issue solely with ALPA or does your disdain for unions cross over to APA as well?


ALPA National does provide resources, institutional knowledge, and tools to the MEC, LEC, and individual members. I’ve personally been represented by a ALPA national attorney on a personal grievance that the MEC attorney couldn’t have because lack of knowledge in that specific issue.. And now I’m currently availing myself to ALPA Aeromedical. Again, this all at the individual level.

So yes, absolutely yes, ALPA National does do much at the individual airline and member level. If you ever become an ALPA status representative, they send you to rep school. There you learn of all the vast things ALPA does behind the scenes. I wish they would show that part of the presentation to all new ALPA members so they wouldn’t have the same misconception that many like you have, (at no fault of your own).

 

The ALPA umbrella provides a lot of services to individual pilots, maybe better than what APA provides? I don't know.

In context of this discussion, ALPA national isn't going to come in and "fix" your MEC or straighten out your relationship with management, or negotiate a better covid deal for you. I can only think of one time in recent decades where national intervened in MEC contract negotiations by declining to approve a contract at a bottom-feeder regional.

I like ALPA, no complaints at the major, but it might not fix what ails you right now. I'm not saying it's not a good long-term move, but only APA pilots can make that call. If AA gets into an M&A at a disadvantage with the M&A partner then it would probably be best to be ALPA since all the likely partners are ALPA, and they do have some rules for SLI.

 

The context I thought this was about is a merger of APA and ALPA. Obviously if that were to happen, it doesn’t change the makeup of the pilots who work for AA. So with that established, what would the merger do for AA pilots? That’s what I was getting at in response to your comment about what has ALPA done for individual MECs. My answer is true and it’s true whether it’s a major airline or a regional airline. My two examples I gave were when I was at a regional airline!

As for merger possibilities, I think you put too much emphasis on APA being better off being ALPA in a merger with another ALPA airline. In that scenario, it’s the only time that ALPA National doesn’t get involved. So you wouldn’t get the benefit of the resources and knowledge from ALPA in that instance. The merger would done in accordance with federal law which basically says to negotiate, mediate, and arbitrate to come to a fair and equitable solution. They wouldn’t be tied to the three specific items required to be used in an ALPA merger although they would probably be used anyway.

 

Not only is ALPA's structure better, with ALPA there is better transparency on how our dues money is spent. Right now, the "Section 6" 1/2% dues assessment is being spent on items other than a new collective bargaining agreement. The C/B's are very clear and written in plane language; The .5% S6 assessment is for spending on a new CBA. Not LOA's or any other items. Just a new CBA.

APA is also hoarding cash via the S6 .5% in case of a bankruptcy filing by the company. Rumor has it that the last bk cost the APA over $30 million so they are hoarding cash.

Any use of the S6 .5% dues assessment is a violation of the APA's Constitution and Bylaws.

There is no way they could get away with this malfeasance under ALPA.

Furthermore, the APA spends an unholy amount of money on legal. It retains many layers and law firms all across the country and costs us millions of dollars. Under ALPA, our legal bills would be substantially lower.

Does that matter to line pilots? Maybe not. Dues are dues, and ALPA is 2%.

However, with the large pilot group of AA, and a merger bringing in assets of over $20 million in cash, and $30 million in investments the pilots of AA would have great influence within ALPA. There is the possibility of lowering dues if that is the most important issue for switching unions.

 

1.85% now. Slowly but surely coming down.