That's a good arguement, but is it strong enough to over come binding arbitration when all the rage is relative integration at least to some degree? DALPA can't risk one single seniority number. Not only that, what is there really to gain by doing this? And how and why is management going to agree? If its done, don't we end up with exactly the same number of allowable outsourced RJ's and large RJ's that can then be flown anywhere?

 

I think you are putting the cart before the horse though, neither ALPA national or management want us to merge together and recapture small jet scope. This is about getting regional pilots under the ALPA umbrella and making them work for as little as possible. If you ask me, ALPA national is trying to make a power play that its regional partners get exclusive rights to Delta mainline jobs in the future. Imagine if the only way to get a high paying job in this profession is to go through ALPA first, that would be very good for their business. Pinnacle is looking like the pilot project for this.

 

Heyas Bar,

It was my understanding that the GoJets/TSA decision established a precedent that made this an impossibly high bar to hurdle. Surely they know better.

Nu

 

Please don't tell me you fell for the carrot. No surprises here. The group will fall for it again. People should read more quotes from George Santayana.

 

Yeah, but 80, so many things have changed since he (pretty much) promised hiring!

- The economy has gone downhill drastically. Well, actually, I guess it's kind of more of a flat hill. Like completely level.

- Life in the military has gotten so bad (by not changing at all) that droves of people have started to come off mil leave...hundreds every day. We have so many people coming off mil leave we can't even find planes to put them in! We may have to flow some of them down to Pinnacle!

- We have so many airplanes unexpectedly going into lie-flat mod...we never could have predicted this before the TA. And like the Bermuda Triangle, or Bangkok, once they go in, they never come back out.

Those are just a few of the changes...there could be more!

 

In light of this LOA, I wonder if the Compass guaranteed interview (for non-flow pilots) is an agreement between Compass management and DL or between the MEC and DL. I believe it is an agreement between managements

 

The only place I read about a hint of hiring was when our TA was up for vote. I am done reading these updates. It was always pretty obvious to me that we are still a few years away from hiring. I did not vote for the TA, but when it passed, I was really hoping we would hire because we were told we could hire as early as 4th quarter last year. That never happened. Now these same updates are saying we could hire as early as 2014. I agree with the above post. Nothing changed. We are on about the most predictable path possible. It is obvious there was never any plans for immediate hiring. These updates are political in nature and used to manipulate the pilot group. I am now one less member in the audience. I'd also like to add the one recently mentioned that all Pinnacle pilots with meet our hiring standards in a very politically correct way. I would not be surprised if the so called "vault letter" letting the "Gulfstream pilots of Pinnacle" come over actually exists.

 

Yep. I think you are exactly correct. Some think we should accept what GoJets / Teamsters did and move on. But, they caused a lot of harm and that is an example where ALPA fought the good fight for this profession.

 

You make a pragmatic point. In the past you have also advocated the importance of following procedure. As you stated, "process matters." Process particularly matters to the guy who loses the debate. Organizational rules exist to protect the minority view, since the majority is usually adept at taking care of itself.

In this matter, I believe my MEC's action was appropriate given the political reality that the deal was already done, debate prior to the February MEC meeting would have been unlikely to change anything.

Perhaps consideration should be given to refining the MEC Admin manual to more thoroughly consider the idea of virtual meetings. As a line guy, I would like a provision for members to view open sessions and to address the MEC, as allowed by the Chairman, in similar fashion to what we allow in meetings were all are present.

 

I was on the frontline of that battle, and trust me, they didn't want to fight...

That battle illustrates what I try to tell guys who constantly bash ALPA. ALPA is only as good as the people who volunteer.