I'm not "afraid" of a membership vote. It's just a dumb proposition with how we currently do union business. Our LECs run the show. They set policy. They vote to approve certain chair positions. They vote for contractual LOAs or TAs. They set the negotiating priorities. The MEC Chairman works directly for the majority of them.

In the current way we do business, we would have to choose between 2 or more random pilots no one has heard of and decide based solely on high school class president quality campaign letters. I promise free food in the crew lounge and hotel points! If that person wins, the LEC has no power to speak for the will of their constituents. 0-9? Too bad..the pilots elected Captain free stuff for everyone.

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There are no pilots (true line pilots) in any management positions. We are a ledger item... full stop.

In other words, the same way we currently choose LEC leaders. And as your first paragraph states, the LECs are supposed to be running the show regardless.

I’m more interested in the voices of the pilot group as a whole being heard than I am the voices of the few select pilots who are on the MEC — many of whom are only concerned about their ALPA careers. There are too many potential conflicts of interest and ways to manipulate a group that small. The potential risks to having a much larger electorate are significantly less IMHO.

The current situation demonstrates the need for greater checks and balances on the MEC.

I've already said I don't like our current system but at least you're more likely to encounter and talk to one of the reps in your base. I haven't seen or talked to anyone from Seattle in months.

I won't support a change in MEC elections until we make more meaningful changes to how our union does business. Otherwise, it's too easy for fringe demographics to spin the narrative in their favor.

Improvements are needed. DALPA has expanded the use of MEMRAT over the years, which is a step in the right direction. Both the MEC Chairman and ALPA President are the last sticking points, due to the sheer level of politics and cronyism involved.

I wouldn’t worry about that too much. The way officers are elected is set by National bylaws. The only way to change that would be amend the bylaws, which would take a 2/3s vote of the BOD. The BOD is made up of your local reps.

Most of them do pay attention, and after watching the trainwreck at APA, are probably not interested in that kind of governance.

And somehow, an unknown candidate with only a single 2 year term as MEC chairman defeated the assumed heir apparent from UAL in the most lopsided election in ALPA history.

You clearly weren’t here pre-2015, because then you’d know what top down MEC governance really looks like.

Take away the negotiating environment we were in, along with the progress we were making relative to our peers, and we’d all be reading monthly editorials from the heir apparent right now.

I was around pre-2015. Suffice it to say, Moak is the worst product of ALPA’s flawed election bylaws.

Can you point to an effective leadership model in modern democracies that is insulated from cronyism? What might you propose we try to emulate?

UAL had already turned on TI, if that’s who you are referring to. The UAL TA was a disaster, and he lost the support of his own pilot group.

But ANCMAN said it was all about politics and cronyism, so the support of the pilots shouldn’t matter.

No system is fully insulated from cronyism. My point was simply that opening the MEC Chairman vote to 16,000+ pilots, the very people who the organization represents, provides much more insulation from cronyism than a poll among a couple dozen politicians. We should have a say as to who fills the role of our most prominent representative.

When you commit a blunder the size of Insler’s, it becomes politically dangerous to continue supporting him. His loss of support wasn’t limited to pilots.

How many reps that voted for DH have been reps for more than 3 terms. How many who voted for the other guy were?

Personally, I’m not a fan of the other guy either. Both were long-time insiders with more concern for their own interests than the interests of the pilot group.

Let the entire pilot group vote and the game changes entirely. We’d be more likely to see a wider selection of quality candidates.

And more candidates we would know nothing about. I’m in favor of debate VIA teams.

Ancman I think your beef is less with the way MEC Chair gets elected and more the unilateral authority they have to settle grievances and how this most recent case went down. In my view making the MEC Chair an even bigger popularity contest solves nothing, and if anything it could invigorate the winner to believe the merit of reaching such status entitles them to make decisions against the will of the MEC. I'd be more interested in further limiting their power rather than giving them justification to consolidate more of it.

The LOA to remove batch sizes should have gone to MEMRAT. Which means we may have actually gotten something for it.

Agreed that it should have gone to memrat. Still standing by to see what we got in that trade.

This has long been the issue, unchecked power and authority. P E B!!! was a direct result of an authortarian talking down to the masses. His deal to settle a grievance was the catalyst to the only ever NO vote. He had a God complex, these are the types that seek the position. They need to be kept in check.

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.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

My fear that someone could sway the vote worse. Remember the 4 we had running? KP had zero chance. As did the guy who does the podcast. What if the other guy turned into a rabble rouser? Then we have a MEC chair who tried to get the FO rep recalled for voting against him. Someone who would pull a stunt like that is dangerous.

You guys are….something.

The MEC Chair works directly for the MEC, which is comprised of the LEC reps. Having a MEC Chair elected by the pilot group creates the same train wreck system currently known as the APA.

Almost as dangerous as someone who would voluntarily give away a negotiated benefit from our PWA, for nothing in return, through a closed-door settlement process. Then five months later send videos to the pilot group about how he is surprised and angry that management continues to walk all over him.

Harbaugh says chicken is a nervous bird.https://chumley.barstoolsports.com/w...wlWwAA6lTQ.png

Hopefully they are stupid enough to join ALPA. You need the dues.

You guys who keep saying “nothing in return” either don’t know the details or you’re intentionally ignoring the facts of the agreement or the circumstances surrounding it. It’s fine to disagree with the trade we made with the settlement agreement or feel like we didn’t get enough, or demand that something so important go to memrat. But you sound like an ignoramus to imply one man unilaterally gave the company something for nothing. A majority of our reps, in conjunction with and on the recommendation of a well-informed, hard-working and pilot-friendly scheduling committee chair, decided to strike the deal they did. Your hyperbole on the matter perfectly illustrates why we don’t need thousands of pilots group-thinking our way onto direct- electing a snake oil salesman promising to take management to the woodshed.

OK. So what did we get? Specifically. Not go read the agreement. What is it we got? A promise? Unfulfilled months later with no punishment for not following through? Really. Is there something I am missing here? I hope there is.

But that "group think" is somehow different than an alleged poll that destroyed a much ballyhooed pillar of the contract.

Good to know.

The deal was approved by the majority of the MEC. They gave him the authority to make that deal.