But it wasn’t an LOA, but a grievance settlement. After MD unilaterally settled one of the scope grievances back in 2015 or so, the policy was changed so that all group grievance settlements had to go before the MEC. MEC chairs no longer have the authority to settle grievances. That means everyone gets to talk to the committees handling it and they have their chance to tell the MEC why or why not this is a good idea.

My guess is that after hearing what the committees thought, as well as the lawyers, that was the path the MEC decided was the one they decided was most prudent. My other guess is the actual facts, as told by the people were actually preparing the case, which includes all of the notes, that there was considerable jeopardy in the outcome.

The last big group grievance was the RJ grievance, which despite being sold by my then rep as a “sure thing” actually turned out worse for us, and that’s not even including the loss of whatever it was we might have gained as a settlement.

 

Agree with the bolded above.. The fact the MEC chair used procedural voodoo to unilaterally approve the batch size offer needs to be changed. Most anything affecting this group should be MEMRAT. No more of this concentrated power stuff.

 

Our policy manual permits this to go to MEMRAT and that's where ti shouild have gone. Vast majority of the crews I fly with have all agreed to this. The LECs should have pushed back on DH and sent to the vote of membership. Let's not forget, DH gave away something WE NEGOTIATED FOR in C19.

 

All I konw is that if JM was the chair this would have gone to MEMRAT most riky tik.

Other than JM, RS was the last pilot advocate we had in that seat in recent time and you saw what they did to him. I could go on and on back to the 90's about the MEC chair. We've had some good ones, and some turds. Mostly they are there, with exception of very few, to benefit themselves with eyes on a launch into management either in the company or at national. We are often an after thought to some of these people.

DH didn't care about his decision, it is what his masters in the 4th wanted him to do. Heck, they probably showed him the procedural voodoo in our ALPA procedural manual he could use to unilaterally make the decision.

It's December 1st. We've heard nothing, other than we are to be "educated" (educated? like in a Mao camp or something?) on how to properly audit our pay.

 

What procedural voodoo? The MEC votes it up or down, same as they do for MOUs. DH didn’t do anything solo, nor under policy is he able to. If you want to hold people responsible, then that would include the reps who supported the settlement as well as the committees that said this was the way to go.

Batch sizes were not a part of C2019 other than to actually increase the sizes slightly.

I’m not a DH fan, but the claim by some that he has all kinds power is simply not accurate. The MEC has peeled a lot of authority away from the chair over the years, so lay the blame where it belongs.

I was in ATL around 2016 when all that dysfunction was going on between the reps. JM’s biggest supporters on the MEC at the time (SdR & SM) voted against the MEMRAT change. They wouldn’t have done so if JM had supported it. They were the only 2 votes against it.

 

Councils 1 and 16 put out a good memo regarding how the GS batch size decision went down. Go read the combined LEC memo they put out. It explains it better than I could.

 

Which is exactly what happened in our C15 TA1, and is why Donatelli lost the support of this pilot group and resigned. Thankfully, John Malone (who just retired) came in to (help) save the day.

 

Where you here in 2000? JM had a good reason to do what the did. I don't think they expected that provision to be used the way it was. I don't think DH even knew it was there, unitl probably a compnay lawyer told him about it. But that's just specualtion on my part.

I'm not here to rehash what happened back in the day. How Lee got voted in (by like 2 or 3 votes - same as the DFW guys would have given JM). Like I said, we've had some good MEC chairs and some turds. As far as JM - we were lucky to have him serve when he did. Same for SD. SD impressed me with LOA 51. But then again union business has always been less baout us, and more about progression of the top to "better" things. The guys I mentioned above I think were true advocates for this group with no ulterior motives intended.

 

I’m absolutely in favor of further limiting the chairman’s unilateral authority. I would even agree that those changes are more important than changing the election bylaws.

But I maintain that opening the position to membership vote would be a further check against the cronyism that has produced such “leaders” as Moak, Donatelli, and to a lesser extent, Hartmann.

 

As someone pointed out above, the theoretical path to that is difficult, and in reality impossible. You have a better chance of running for the position yourself, or at least working yourself up to it with ALPA work. DH was a council rep for barely 2 terms with zero committee work and he's MEC chairman. JA had one 1 term as secretary, 1 term as chair and before that his ALPA work was basically a committee guy now he's ALPA president.