rickair7777

True, but that can occasionally be a good thing too... I recall one time where ALPA national saved a regional pilot group from it's own MEC.

Can't argue with that.

pilgram

If you are stupid enough to discount the true horror stories from your fellow pilots concerning the way ALPA threw them literally under the bus-then go forth with this bad idea. Heck-it will never happen to you....right?!?! All I ask is to create a provision to allow me to never pay a penny to ALPA. As I won't. ALPA has factually and undeniably done more harm to my career than the company, the bankruptcies, APA or any other outside factors times 10. You can count me out.

sanicom3205

Can you lay out the details of how alpa screwed your group?

Margaritaville

Nice first post. Takes a created a new account first post internet tough guy to pound his chest and say he won't pay union dues at a closed shop. Suuuure you won't.

I don't disagree with you, but how about giving us some examples? Quick fire up your google machine.

It's more than a little hyperbolic to say a union ruined your career too. All unions are the same. And the union is the members. More likely world events ruined your career in the lost decade, like the rest of us. But maybe here, later than we ever though, there's a chance to redeem ourselves if we have the right attitude. I'm not sure you'll make it.

PS what's a "pilgram"?

pilgram

Ok, were going back decades here, so I’m sure I’ll miss a lot. My biggest problem with ALPA is that they failed to represent the pilot group as a whole. They focused on the upper half of the seniority list, and simply collected dues from the bottom half while providing really poor representation. “Eat their young” is real.

In early 1990, we had a domicile meeting in which Randy Babbit was in attendance. At that time, the B-Scale was in full effect. For those of you who don’t know what the B-Scale is (believe me, I have flown with those who have no idea what it was) this was a pay scale in which during your first five years of employment-your pay rates were something in the order of half of that of your peers doing the exact same job. The selling point from the union and the airline was-this will enable us to buy more aircraft and you will benefit by receiving a much earlier upgrade to Captain. For me, that timeframe was 25 years-no joke. So I guess my upgrade time would have been thirty years if I hadn’t done the five years on B-Scale! So, with the B-Scale we also had a very low pay rate for an aircraft called the Fokker F-28. At the time there was no such thing as RJs. But the truth is the F-28 was an RJ. Regionals during this error were not allowed, contractually, to fly jets. Turboprops only-and under 50 seats. So, things were getting pretty tense with these persistent lower pay scales for the so called junior pilots. This wasn’t something that lasted say four or five years or so-as the F-28 had low pay scales no matter if you were on the B-scale or not. The question was posed during this meeting to Randy Babbit ( the head of ALPA at the time) “How do you feel about pilots flying the F-28 earning less than Flight Attendants?” (which was true-they did make less). He said that he was perfectly fine with that as that is what we negotiated. From the top on down, we had a culture that was fine with pilots making ridiculously low wages while the rest prospered. It was a very sick culture.

As the company’s management continued to perform poorly, the company sought relief from the union. In one exchange of givebacks the company wanted relief from our duty rigs. While I don’t remember what they were specifically, they were much better than they are today. Do you get that?-we still haven’t regained the givebacks that we made in the early 1990s. Anyway, in exchange for the duty rigs the company and ALPA agreed to a no furlough cause. That was reasonable right? Wrong, because about six months later the company went back to the union and said that they wanted to furlough three hundred pilots. Which this freaking so called union was seriously considering saying yes to. The problem was-in the constitution and bylaws it stipulated that negotiations are to be conducted in a quid pro quo basis. Essentially, the union was giving up the duty rigs, throwing three hundred members under the bus, and getting nothing in return-other than sustaining their higher pay rates. It was the beginning of ALPA coming apart at usair. Several recalls occurred, the pilot group became more fragmented, the whole thing was being terribly managed by ALPA. The strong pushback from the junior pilots held off the furloughs, so the company simply pushed everyone down the list with the bottom pilots being forced into “inactive status” on the F-28. So basically a 40% payloss. For me, this went on for 9 months, for others much longer.

911 hit following years of financial losses by management and the house of cards crumbled down. The company and union agreed to paycuts (for all this one time) in the neighborhood of 40%. Insult to injury-the paycuts were retroactive to the beginning of negotiations which translated to about six weeks of no pay as we paid the company back-for the paycuts. That wasn’t nearly enough to save the company as they staggered into bankruptcy-twice. If memory serves-we immediately surrendered our scope concerning RJs. This was the first time I have even heard the term “RJ”. Half of our mainline flying was transferred to the regionals overnight. And with it was our “no-furlough clause “was surrendered. At that time, I was in my 13th year with the airline, had done five years on the B-Scale, several on the F-28 and had only a year or two whereby I earned over $100,000. I was about 38% up the list-and was furloughed. ALPA had negotiated a “jets for jobs” exchange. In this exchange we were to forfeit our scope and in return-get a low paying job as a regional rj Captain-without bringing our seniority, vacation, sick or anything else. Saying jets for jobs was mishandled by ALPA would be a gross understatement. I went from working in the training department as an IP to an RJ Captain for mesa making $42,000 per year. I had three young kids and a wife to care for-and this is what ALPA hung on me. Also, part of that deal the pilot group would receive a decent amount of common stock. Problem that ALPA failed to see was if you were furloughed-that was taxable right on the spot-whether you sold it or not. So, while on furlough making $42,000 as an RJ Captain-I inherited a $4,700 tax liability. Thanks ALPA. Insult to injury-the company went through a second bankruptcy in which the stock was wiped out before we had the window to cash it out.

Four years on that furlough. During the second bankruptcy it was decided by ALPA to surrender our defined benefit plan to the PBGC-without a membership vote. Personally, my projected retirement at age 60 went from $1.8 million to the PBGC minimum of just under $2,500 per month with marginalizing survivorship benefits. For many already retired, collecting the annuity, they lost it all. It was really, really bad. In exchange for the defined benefit plan ALPA agreed to a 401K style of retirement. In this agreement currently employed pilots received something of a 17% catchup payment to get their plan going-while we on furlough-only got 10% at the time of recall. Another B-Scale type of deal. Also, at this time the America West merger entered our professional lives. We emerged from our second bankruptcy in part due the financial shell game that merger gave us. Merger talks ensued with ALPA being the union at both carriers. I was recalled from furlough in December of 2007. In May of 2008 George Nicolau decided that all pilots of usairways that were on furlough-would be stapled to the bottom of the list. Even though we were back. So, with 18 years with the company, four of them furloughed, I went junior to a two year pilot. Under the ALPA merger language date of hire was stressed as long as one side didn’t have any significant windfall. Captain Prader at that time was the head of ALPA. And he declined to get involved. So, the pilot group had quit enough of ALPA at his point, they were voted off the property in favor of usapa.

I went to ALPA National headquarters twice during these times with a number of friends whom were in similar seniority positions. We spoke with Babbit, Prader, Jim Johnson and alike. We were in fact told that we would never have the financial means to take on ALPA in a DFR. They were completely snobby and imperialistic towards us. Not one ounce of care for the careers being destroyed literally immediately before them.

I left out things like Metrojet, I left out the details our our domicile reps literally refused to represent us, all of the contractual concessions without any snap backs, pilots flying well over max and maxing out their banks while we had pilots on furlough and the fact that the company never had a problem that ALPA couldn’t solve by taking away from the junior members-no matter how long you were on the property. In review of my statements from the social security administration my career earnings are abysmal compared to most in our profession. That is directly associated with my many years under ALPA.

The moral of my story is that ALPA is an incredibly expensive union. They’re expensive in terms of simple dues. And they are incredibly expensive in terms of harm to careers. What’s worse is that when the going gets rough-they are definitely not there to fight shoulder to shoulder. They run. They take the money and run. Additionally, I haven’t missed ALPA National one single bit since our break from them. With them, you’re simply paying for way too much to get very little in return. My earnings, lifestyle, the whole enchilada is much much better with ALPA out of my life. For the sake of the great men and women that I currently work with, I hope it stays that way.

sanicom3205

I don’t mean this as a shot at you, it’s not. But you’re just relatively senior now. The parallels between your stories and the junior pilot’s current situation would be kind of funny if it weren’t so sad. Same as it ever was. The difference is you’re above the line now and you weren’t then.

Cujo665

even if true, the difference is you, the members, can fix your union. Becoming a part of a larger brand brings with it the exact baggage he described, and you can’t fix that. The real problem is the RLA. It handcuffs airline unions. Therefore, no brand is really any better than the other since the RLA limits the biggest most powerful tool of union effectiveness. Changing brands isn’t going to fix anything for you at this time. In fact, it will add another layer of administration to fight with.

get your own house in order. Then evaluate if changing brands is needed. I suspect you’ll find it isn’t.

sanicom3205

If anything, pointing out that the same problems APA has now are the same that ALPA had at usair is an argument in favor of your position. I’m not necessarily arguing here for the switch to ALPA. I’m saying that those issues he/she explained are not unique.

Cujo665

Very valid statement, however the fact remains that ALPA won't fix the fragmentation within your pilot group. You guys have to do that yourselves. Fixing that issue alone will likely remove the desire to switch brands anyway. You all need leaders with proven track records of getting the troops to all march in step, and that have experience dealing with the rather unique management style of AAG and Ford & Harrison.
Sam Pool as your new President is my recommendation. Start recruiting new blood at all levels to run for positions within the APA.

NuGuy

The problem is that long term, strategic change in the way you do business takes a long, long time, and concerted, persistent, long term efforts on the part of some dedicated volunteers who really believe in what they're doing, and aren't there to game the system, look out for buddies or trying to lock down a good deal. The way most bylaws work, and I'm sure APA has them, you need to have a confluence of dedicated local reps and whatever the APA has for officers to be on the same page. That means people have to get together, commit to the plan, and be able to get elected and get their message across over several terms. You also need a healthy dose of luck that something doesn't come along and blow up your efforts. The people who get involved are going to have to let go of the past and work forward.

If you have 5-6 factions, all pulling in different directions, you're going to wait a long, long time for anything to change. Even if they come together temporarily, those kinds of internal alliances always fall apart when whatever their core goals get threatened.