heard you didn’t last too long in your union position. What happened?

 

No one likes a FPL sniffer/chaser. You're there to volunteer, trying to milk it is stealing from your fellow pilot.

 

Plenty of DALPA screw-ups from all of the Administrations but I believe its mainly caused by folks who start out with good intentions and then get enamored with by the "Dark-side" of FPL loss. We need some kind of DALPA term limits.

After 3 years in position - 3 years on the line. 18 months in position - 18 months on the line. The lure of FPL is strong and apparently corrupts many a once pure soul.

Scoop - Just my 2 cents.

 

If its full time FPL or more than 5 days a month, 100% agree term limits are great. The guy spending 3-5 days a month doing real work where TIME teaches, not so much. I don't know what you do with negotiating committee volunteers though.

The company speaks in terms of relationships, if you spend time building trust and integrity its tough on the company to lose a guy on the committee. Thats probably where the MEC needs to make judgement calls on a volunteer's ability and work ethic.

 

Some committee positions require a very specific skill set that is acquired over time. Talking to the scheduling guys, the peculiar nature of the way DAL works with the committee, it can take a year to train up a volunteer to “full”. They say the skill is perishable, so a couple days a month probably won’t work.

Assuming committee guys are always training their replacements, you’re always going to have a higher number of volunteers than are absolutely required.

 

Yeah you're going to talk about the important ones, the contract enforcement, negotiating... Hard fast rules dont work when its the true merit based positions. ...In theory, the MEC should be working so close with those groups he/she/them/*wink* should know who is working hard and who isnt.

The MEC position is building on previous work, that should be passable onto the next guy easily enough.

Full disclosure: I don't have a high opinion of the popularity contest positions personally, i decouple reverence from power, thats my bias and it may not be accurate.

 

NC would have to be for a specific contract, as a matter of fact why not hire professional negotiators? I don't buy the guys can't be replaced argument -especially for committers with multiple members who can have overlapping dates. There may have to be a few one offs but it could be done.......................................if DALPA actually wanted it.

Scoop

 

There are pros in the room. ALPA National brings them in for every negotiation.

 

if you've never seen it, the analysts come in and back your people up the whole way. You might be shocked how much pro's are in the process helping/educating/ and just running numbers. If you get down to the wire and there are serious negotiations daily, you'll just see them in the office furiously running pivot tables and costing, then briefing the team when they get back. Honestly, when your negotiators are really hitting on all cylinders its when they have this wealth of knowledge to draw on from the pros.

Having true pro's might be better but- my limited experience- I've seen some pretty great deals from pilots who have the information from months of negotiating.

Honestly, theres probably lots of solutions, I'm just more trusting of the stuff i see work. I dont know how to say this without sounding terse, but the pilots here I've run across have a lot or competing visions and a lot of reactionary takes compared to other pilot groups ive been a part of. There are times we seem to act a little like a mob- for lack of a better term. Certainly the voting down of TA1 was very wise from the outside looking in. I'm not sure if it was wisdom or reactionary luck that got us there.

Hoping for the best though.

 

Talk to us about how much dues money Brent Allen has spent on top shelf alcohol.

I’ve never used one penny of dues money on alcohol in my 36 years. I’ve always opposed hospitality suites. You can search the record. 90% of my union work I did for free. No flight pay loss. You?