livindadream

It might seem strange... But, every single paragraph in the CBA has a dollar amount attached. Agreeing to the Costing of the articles in a CBA is always the most cumbersome and time consuming part of negotiations. The parties spend months just trying to assign values to things.

The companies goal is a "zero-sum" contract. And our goal is to increase the cost to the company to our advantage in contract improvements.

Osmosis

Nice! We just got kicked right in the balls!

kwri10s

I would say that firing the legal team should be the first thing the MEC does on Tues Am. If you are hired to defend the members and more specifically the contract, when you lose 0-3 in this instance you should get fired. There must be better, more talented legal folks available for hire. This is on top of losing several other items we've grieved over the last several years. I'd say a complete failure to accomplish the goals for which you were retained. While a contract is a great thing, if we cannot enforce the contract, it is worthless.

In fact the MEC Chair even acknowledged our team was worthless when he wrote, "which seems to place form over substance ." Meaning that our guys could not provide better form than their guys. Even having substance. When their paperwork is better than our paperwork, that is just sad.

Balut

I had no idea (obviously). Guess I'll read up on how airline contracts are negotiated, but you're right, it does seem strange.

DaRaiders

Love the avatar, dude.

DaRaiders

What are you willing to give up in return?

Jaxman187

I'm with the "don't waste the energy/negotiating capital" group. Fedex has never signed a deal they couldn't weasel or malinger out of. Whatever we replace this language with will leave some other "out" for Big Purple's lawyers and we will start this all over again. At least now the the company is under some remote understanding that there should be some balance between airframes.

Going forward, the current agreement allows for more pilots to be carried on the books and that is the ultimate goal isn't it. At least it is now somewhat tested(if not in our favor) contract language.

Go for the money only, pick a date and draw a line in the sand.

iarapilot

I have an idea. Lets try to negotiate a contract that gives us what we want, within reason (yea, I know that is subjective). And when the Company stonewalls us, we all decide that open time is not in our best interest, using all of your vacation sounds like fun, etc., etc. Of course that wouldnt happen in our real world (has been proven since I have been here), but it would be the quickest solution. If only my ALPA brothers and sisters would wise up!

Or, we should push to get in our contract what the UPS folks have, where the union can call for no extra flying.

And boy, we did get pooched by that arbitrator!

Daniel Larusso

Always 'fun' sifting through arbitrator's decisions.

The overriding theme to me reading through the decision was that the language did us in from the jump off. The initial FPA language was weak, not supported well by additional language, clarifying statements or links to other pertinent sections of the agreement. Our last MEC/NC confounded it in general by not re-writing the contract to a more standard ALPA contract and also by not discussing the provision in the last negotiations. The language presented an incredibly high burden for our lawyers to overcome, and the arbitrator was not about to help us in that regard. A few have said we should fire our lawyers, but reading the decision I can't say that I was anymore impressed by what the company's lawyer's and reps said. There seemed to be multiple contradictions and nonsensical things within their statements/testimony, but they had a much lower burden to meet to prove their position in the case and as such their garbage went unchallenged. (Were we 822 pilots overmanned,

The sun is still coming up tomorrow, and I plan to keep on living so onto the positives. I felt comfortable going in that the arbitrator wouldn't give the company carte blanche to enter 4.a.2.b, every time they aren't hiring, there's a seasonal downturn or a minor economic hiccup. While they didn't state it that the way I would have liked in the decision, they did state that 4.a.2.b can be used capriciously, and with this system board holding jurisdiction it is nice knowing that they've reviewed the manning data from probably the worst economic disaster of our careers. Similarly I would have liked a stronger position on the disparity of BLG's, but they did provide a lot of illumination there and a framework that will probably used going forward.

There was some debate/question here of whether or not actions by the company after the hearings were over could be submitted to the arbitrator as evidence. The decision should make it pretty clear that is not the case. Many of the shenanigans that the union and crewforce have complained took place after the period the system board reviewed. This is probably one of the reasons that the company voluntarily took themselves out of 4.a.2.b. The decision not allowed either the company or ALPA to bring the outstanding issues back to the board if they cannot come to a resolution, it clearly opened the door for new evidence to be introduced. While I doubt that such evidence could get us our money back, it would seem to have a better chance of helping to establish the limits on the use and application of 4.a.2.b that ALPA sought. The company's overmanning, % of crews flying above 68/85, and historically crewing (lines/reserve/secondaries) all look worse if you consider the period after July 2009.

In the end as someone mentioned, the language worked albeit not the way we envisioned it. The ruling however gives a pretty solid framework on where exactly to start to fix it, and the way we should view ALL sections and LOA's in the agreement no matter how big or small they seem at the moment. Language, language, language. The decision basically pointed out that we are relatively young union group, and that we've made mistakes because of it in negotiations. However the board felt they were here to teach us lesson, not help us in that regard.

hyperone

Kwri, I'm not sure firing our current legal team is the answer either. This part of the contract was negotiated by the FPA leadership. Kind of hard to defend something so poorly written.
As an aside, I flew with the past president of the FPA not too long ago, who assured me we were going to win this case in arbitration, because the company was "clearly violating the intent" of the 4.A.2.b., and that the background notes that were written during the negotiations, clearly supported our position.
Lesson learned? NEVER rely on "background" notes, or "intent" language. We need to recognize that the company will exploit every single "grey" area in any future contract.
Have you closely read our current contract. I mean closely read it. Talk about a bunch of lawyerly double-speak. Enough of that Cr@p! It simply riddles our current contract. How about writing our future contracts in plain english? Many, many business and legal documents are being converted over to plain english - why not our contract?
For me, if it's not in black-and-white, I ain't votin' for it in the future! And, I'm sure not voting for any future contract that doesn't clean up the 4.A.2.b. language.