Never mind.......

Was gonna praise Wayne Brady but then went back and read the previous posts.

Aside from the race debate, which really doesn't belong here and is symptomatic of so many assumed stereotypes, Brady has an awesome show in Vegas. We saw him last year and he puts it all out there.

 

Save 'em, plus add some more.

777's and 747-400's:

United: 97

American: 60

Delta: *30

*as of (1/1/15)

 

Yes, but how many do we have if you count our JV partners?

 

I am ****ed. Since our marketing department is sooooooo good they cannot find any city pairs to put the whale on and make money. I call bullshot. That's their job. Our charter it out. I think they, marketing make to many decisions on the fly and this is another.

 

I like boobies.

Sheesh, lighten up everyone.

 

I agree. Going out to water the plants now.





Carl

 

Settle down, Captain Happy.

 

So how many more whales leave in 2015? These 4 are just the start it will be interesting to see what comes next.

 

This is the kind of thing that gives me hope that ALPA may not be a totally lost cause. Sorry for the length of this, but it's a must read. It'll be fun to watch the Moak disciples here personally attack Heidi for writing this as opposed to debating the facts:


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The CAL/UAL Joint Contract
ALPA’s Largest Merger in its History

I first would like to thank the membership and ALPA BOD members who have reached out to me with such positive feedback following my first two letters. Your feedback and support continue to shore up my faith that ALPA truly can be the membership driven, member serving organization that it needs to be, provided we have the right leadership and direction.

When I came to the UAL MEC as the Legislative Chairman in January 2012, I was tasked with working outside the box and finding creative solutions to leverage our position during the Section 6 negotiating process. Our merger was announced in May 2010 and finalized October 2010. The CEO’s from both airlines (Smisek & Tilton) spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill making grand promises of a smooth transition, including getting the labor contracts done right away. Regarding the pilots’ joint CBA, they even promised to “meet in direct negotiations at least four whole or partial days every week until October 5, 2010 with the intent of completing the negotiations within that eight-week period” (as stated in ALPA’s Transition & Process Agreement between UAL/CAL ALPA and management). It would be more than two years after the merger before we finally secured our Joint Contract.

I engaged Jay Heppner (the UAL MEC Chairman) right away and had discussions which centered on the use of political pressure to leverage ourselves under the Railway Labor Act in order to expedite our negotiations beyond the stagnation being fostered by management. With this in mind, I brought in a UAL MEC member who could offer us access to the high level government and political contacts that would be critical to our success.

We first called a former high-level executive at the Department of Justice, knowing that this person would be very supportive. Very quickly, she was able to introduce us to a prominent D.C. lobbyist and renowned negotiating attorney at the high-powered Washington beltway law firm Patton Boggs. This man is so well connected in Washington circles that the mere mention of his name and his law firm sent the Company's lawyers and negotiators into frantic damage control. He had also been a senior policy advisor for President Clinton and had access virtually everywhere in D.C., including the White House. This individual would set us on a very similar path to that which the Allied Pilots Association took in their negotiations back in the 1990’s; a path that would have been much smoother, much quicker and more successful had we not had ALPA National working to undermine our efforts.

In the 90’s, the American pilots knew they had limited resources and would be unlikely to ‘win’ a prolonged strike, however the labor friendly Clinton administration gave them assurances that they would not be left to battle the corporation by themselves. Under White House pressure, the National Mediation Board (NMB) released the APA from mediation and they entered the mandatory 30-day “cooling off” period. The goal was to get to a strike and have the President order them back to work and authorize a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) for arbitration. The APA was able to get favorable representation on the PEB and the support they needed from the Whitehouse when Clinton put his friend, Vernon Jordan, in charge of setting up the arbitration. Within thirty days of being ordered back to work, the American Airlines pilots had the richest contract in the industry. And what’s more, they had no SCABS to deal with, no lost wages and no interruption in service for the public.

Let us turn our attention now to November 2010, when United Airlines seemed very happy to agree to bring in the NMB to help with negotiations. This was strange, based on the fact that the board was appointed with two Democrats and one Republican. What we didn’t yet understand was the insidious nature of the relationship between all the players and how this collusion would combine to stymie our efforts to quickly and decisively move forward our negotiations: NMB Chair Linda Puchala (ex-flight attendant), NMB Member Harry Hoglander (ex-ALPA National insider), Nick Calio (CEO of Airlines For America), ALPA President Lee Moak, Seth Rosen (long time ALPA National “outside counsel”), CAL MEC Chairman Jay Pierce, and Jeff Smisek (UAL CEO and Vice Chairman of the BOD - Airlines For America).

My team briefed our Washington advisor on all aspects of our negotiations, including the fact that it had been two years since CEO’s Tilton and Smisek promised Congress a smooth completion of the merger and labor contracts in order to get DOT approval. Once our advisor fully understood our situation, he concluded that our chances of success were very good and he wanted to follow a route similar to that of the American Airlines pilots. Right from the beginning, we established a “short list” of arbitrators who would be selected for the PEB when the time came, and it surely did not include anyone who the corporate boys would have wanted to take on.

With the UAL MEC briefed and on board, we put our advisor and our plan into action and NMB Chairman Puchala began receiving calls from the White House asking why the United and Continental pilots didn’t have a deal. This is when ALPA President Lee Moak and CAL MEC Chairman Jay Pierce became extremely interested in what our plan of execution was to expedite negotiations. Based on the fact that these two people had been content to sit on their hands and let management drag this process out for years, and with worries about previous interaction between management and Pierce, I felt that there were very few people we could trust with the full details of our plan. With that in mind, I gave only general details of our legislative plan to Moak and Pierce. Once these few details had been released, it was very interesting that we suddenly began to hear from ALPA consultants, advisors and attorneys that: “The way the Railway Labor Act is set up, a release from mediation is practically impossible.” These parties argued that this was not the way we needed to proceed and said that even if we were to be released, the 30-day cooling off period would simply be used for both sides to “lawyer up” and we didn’t want that. ALPA National advisors threatened that if we did get to a PEB, “It won’t end well for labor.”

Instead of standing up to management and telling the pilots that through solid strategic planning and perseverance we had an excellent chance of success at bringing home an industry leading contract, ALPA decided to undermine our approach and react to the whims of the company and the NMB. ALPA National’s propaganda began to infiltrate the rank & file and soon we had line pilots claiming to be experts on what we could or could not accomplish under the RLA. These “experts” were essentially Lee Moak supporters who agreed with his management-friendly approach to labor negotiations. His plan was little more than a management driven process where we were to take orders from the A4A and their team of lobbyists and advisors, wait as long as management wanted to wait, and take whatever management wanted us to have when the time finally came. My team instinctively felt that ALPA’s approach would get us nowhere, and I had extreme confidence in the advice we were getting from outside counsel due to their standing record of solid results. Thus, in the face of endless excuses from the NMB and ALPA advisors for the glacial pace of negotiations, we decided to fully embrace this new plan with or without ALPA National’s help.

Once Moak and Pierce knew that it was our outside advisor who was responsible for generating the extreme pressure being applied on Linda Puchala of the NMB to release the pilots, it is my belief that Lee Moak worked in concert with his connections at the A4A to shut us down. The A4A’s CEO and top political lobbyist, Nick Calio (who is now conveniently an editorial writer for Air Line Pilot Magazine), began making calls to Patton Boggs inquiring about the work our advisor was doing for United pilots. Meanwhile Seth Rosen (long time ALPA attorney and Lee Moak’s top negotiations advisor) started to publically discredit our advisor to anyone who would listen. Moak and Pierce’s plan to get rid of our D.C. insider reached a truly astonishing level at a scheduled joint CAL/UAL MEC meeting where Pierce had a select CAL MEC Member leave the room at various times to meet with Seth Rosen who was just outside. Each time, she would return and grill our advisor with virtually the exact same questions that Nick Calio had asked the partners at Patton Boggs. Subsequent calls to Patton Boggs from Calio claimed a “conflict of interest” due to other multi-million dollar accounts that Patton Boggs had with the airlines. This meant that despite the existence of no true conflict, the big money pressure had worked. Under protest, our advisor had to let us go. This is how the game is played in Washington D.C. We had been outmaneuvered from behind by our own Association.

I was adamant that we needed to continue the pressure on the NMB through political avenues, making certain that Congress knew labor was being left behind in the world’s largest airline merger. Before our attorney left, he set us up with another D.C. insider who would advise us the rest of the way to the goal line. We were furious at the previous betrayals, and determined to press our cause forward. This time, only three people would know the real name of our ally.

Eventually, with the strong support of some members of the UAL and CAL MEC’s, we were able to put enough pressure on Moak to write a letter to the NMB asking that the United Pilots be released. To say that this letter was written begrudgingly is an understatement. This occurred concurrently with the IFALPA conference which took place in Paris in the spring of 2012. Given the utter disrespect that United-Continental had shown for the various labor groups from the very start of the merger, I find it rather distasteful that our ALPA President invited Doug Mc Keen, Senior VP of Labor Relations for United Airlines, to the IFALPA conference just as UAL/CAL negotiations were heating up. Moak did write the letter, however it became clear that he made certain that behind the scenes, Seth Rosen would tell Linda Puchala to keep informing the Senate Committees and the White House staff that the pilots were “close” to a deal. After further pressure from my team, another letter urging release went out from Moak, but only because he was shamed into writing it by an outraged UAL and CAL MEC made furious by derogatory comments from UAL management. Behind the scenes, the alternate message of “it's all OK” and “we’re getting close” was still being delivered to the NMB by Moak and his advisors and to Washington by the NMB. Not surprisingly, progress continued to be glacial. Eventually, I demanded that Moak write a third letter and had come just short of dragging him to a typewriter to make it happen. Sadly, the mixed-message damage had been done and unbelievably, we never got an answer from the NMB to our three requests for release.

In the midst of this incredible circus, my team reached out to the upper echelon of the AFL-CIO’s leadership, where we found that enthusiasm for our cause was palpable. We initially met with the knowledge and blessing of ALPA, but at the first sign of successful collaboration, we were prevented from further contact with them unless we had permission from National. It was at this point that I had no doubt that our union President was aggressively working against us.

Despite these setbacks, we continued to work with our Washington insider and our network of D.C. friends to apply a steady stream of pressure on the NMB. Puchala continued to receive calls from the White House staff at a more aggressive rate. Deeply aggravated, Puchala addressed the joint CAL/UAL MEC’s and stated (using profanity) that if Congress and the White House would simply leave her alone, she’d get us a contract. Despite the clear fact that this was not true, and despite the constant undermining of our efforts by Moak and his consultants, we saw this as an opportunity and turned Puchala’s disrespect into a briefing item that we carried to Capitol Hill. An extremely senior Senator who had been keeping track of our struggle was not impressed. He personally called Puchala to relay that message. In no uncertain terms, he laid down the law regarding when she had to complete the contract negotiations or otherwise release the pilots to a cooling off period.

In the end we did achieve success using our strategy in Washington D.C. Regardless, by any rational assessment, the process was unacceptably slow. What's most important for you to know and consider going forward is that not only did the NMB staunchly defend its ridiculous multi-year process, but Lee Moak and his ALPA National staffers and consultants did as well. The Railway Labor Act, enacted by Congress and amended in 1936 to include the piloting profession, is meant to protect the free rights of labor -- YOUR RIGHTS -- when faced with inaction in the collective bargaining process. ALPA did not wish to allow us to exercise these rights as a union!

If elected ALPA President this October, I will NEVER work against you. Instead, I will encourage you to exercise your rights under the law. I will bring you experienced labor advocates to negotiate and lobby on your behalf when you need them, and together we will succeed where acquiescence and collusion have failed for years.

You need and deserve top negotiating attorneys, sourced outside of ALPA, working under renewable, results-oriented contracts. The corporations negotiate using the best possible legal representation, why shouldn’t we? Aren’t you tired of hearing about everything you can’t do from our ALPA advisors and in house attorneys vs. ways that you CAN achieve success? I am!

Finally, let me be clear that working with management collaboratively is not a bad thing. In fact, it should be encouraged. However, lying in bed with them and allowing management to dictate all terms to us as we go forward in our careers will do nothing more than give the A4A the ability to manage us into extinction.

Please visit my website for the most up to date information and see how you can help.

oberndorf

Fraternally,
Heide Oberndorf

---------------------


Carl

 

So is it fair to say that the parking of the whales will essentially wipe out this years retirements?