Good for you.

I would prefer that union work didn’t devolve into an insider’s racket for seagulls. The people who negotiate our next contract should have to fly the line under our current one. No one should gain or lose anything from doing ALPA work.

 

The vast majority of pilots I know who have done union work rotated back to the line and stayed there. The number of lifers I have known I can count on one hand.

 

Serious question… have you gained or lost anything doing union work?

 

You are overlooking the elephant in the room. The company had no intention of negotiating in good faith. The only chance of an "on time" contract was one that devalued the profession. Pretending that $1 billion was available from the company in 2019 is dishonest history.

 

I think it would have been done and inline with the 2012 and 2016 contracts when adjusted for number of pilots. I guess we can argue all day about what came first but just our conceptual opener in April of 2019 probably set the tone for what followed.

 

I voted to strike, second time in my career here. But, I agree with sailing on this issue.

Why would 2B available now and not 1B in 2019? Honest question. Just cause we had a strike vote?

Me thinks we could have easily had 1B and on time in late 2019. Like sailing said that 28M was for trivial items and kinda spun the wrong way.

 

• Section 7 (Vacation) – We are disappointed ALPA was unwilling to close this section despite our offer of significant gains in every major area of vacation, including higher pay per vacation day than both American and United.
  
• Section 8 (Deadhead) – Very little progress was made, but ALPA’s claim that our offers on deadhead lag even Endeavor strains credulity.
  

As we work through the remaining – and in some cases most complex and costly – sections of the contract, we believe both parties should remain focused on making progress and finding areas of compromise. The facts matter, and pilots deserve accurate information from their elected representatives. We will continue to set the record straight.​​​​​​​

 

These statements are maddening to the run of the mill line pilot. I understand there is a gag order on negotiations, but it drives me crazy to read these churched up, half truth summaries. I also understand this stuff is posted to the company propaganda page and its intended purpose, but an open kimono day on where we really are at the table would be a refreshing look at what the bs meter is reading and hold both sides accountable. I'm betting one side would have a little more to lose than the other in this hypothetical info sharing world.

-Interesting there is no mention of the word "credit" in the vacation section summary.
-DH offer (to me at least) is a professional courtesy item. Take care of your people and all... It speaks volumes that this is such a contested section.

 

I know the question was not directed to me, but as someone who did ALPA work for years, I would say it was net loss. I dedicated a lot of time doing things I thought was important for us all, but in the end was a major waste of time. In the end, I wished I hadn’t ever volunteered.

The biggest benefit of the whole experience was that a learned a great deal regarding how the union works and about the nature of pilots. In the former, my pre-conceived notions were 180 degrees from reality. The union is a bottom up organization where power resides at the MEC level. ALPA is more a franchise than a union. In the latter, my eyes were equally opened. I somehow thought pilots were different than the general population and more able to seek access, analyze, and then pragmatically act on information. I was quite wrong there. We pick leaders who best tell us what we want to hear just like everyone else. Our ability or willingness to do exponential math is also as equally flawed.

We are slaves to RLA. We refuse to adapt strategies that have failed, decade after decade, to yield results that beat inflation over the long term. We collectively live in a state of cognitive dissonance and have a highly impaired vision of economic reality and deep ignorance of the past. I don’t expect that to go over well on this board. I will simply say that the results we achieve will speak for themselves.

Sailing has touched on the solution. Modest on time results greatly outperform over the long haul. The key being on time. Modest results after 3-4 years past the amendable date is a disaster and isn’t a viable option other than to stem a bleed out. We are backed into a corner now. Both US Airways and American have had a tragic history when in a similar situation. American never had a Contract 2000. US Airways went 10 years without a raise. It got so bad there that our FOs made more than their captains. All we need now to make that our reality is for a recession to land on us, or God forbid Global Financial Crisis 2.

I think we can still salvage this situation, but it will depend on a lot of lifting by other players, namely the NMB, American, and United. We are controlling our own destiny only as far as we can continue along a single path that remains to us. Singles, doubles, and triples can’t win the game. It’s home run or lose big time at this point.

I agree with Sailing. The mistake was attempting to negotiate in 2019 with an impossible demand. Clearly neither side seriously attempted to have an agreement by the amendable date. We wasted time and waited for something bad to happen. This time it did.

I’m not a company man. I voted YES. I’m right there with you all. We have only one path to travel and I’m as committed to it as anyone here. Not by choice or because I think it was a good idea. It’s simply the only option that remains.

 

Yet we were never allowed a peek at the company opener. That would have set the tone. They, as always, intend to slow walk negotiations unless they get what they want ie. productivity and profit sharing gives. You keep going back to the ALPA conceptual opener without questioning the company opener. Which was the real brick on the ledger. Record profits and record pilot demand equals the only opportunity for restorative gains. What you would have us do, if even available, would have been to squander the best ever environment for a pittance.