They stated the part about "Lee" not negotiating for the Delta pilots to me too. But they definitely were justifying and defending what he said in that article. Maybe they hadn't quite firmed up their talking points at the time I was exchanging emails with them last week? :rolleyes:

There's only one?? ;)

Yeah, they tried to use that one on me too. Straw man. The whole point of the email exchange was the damage that Lee Moak did to our prospects for C2015 with those quotes. I don't think anyone was making the claim that he was negotiating for us. Just that those quotes would be damaging to any effort to achieve the kind of significant (dare I say "onerous?" :eek:) increases it will take to restore our buying power.

For example: "Moak contends that ALPA pilots at the larger carriers enjoy what he calls “mature, good contracts” already. Radical overhauls aren’t in the cards, he says."

Again, my reps agreed with and defended those quotes.

Seham was not an expert witness in the TWA trial. His "expert report" was dismissed as gossip and hearsay by the trial judge. He never testified and his report was thrown out of court.

Seham had no effect in the United SLI hearing, this has been covered again and again and yet, typical of you, you bring up the same lies hoping that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes thought of as the truth. Seham sent a letter to the arbitration panel and it was never read. Any first year law student understands that you can't try to introduce evidence in a hearing AFTER the hearing is over. For example, how would anyone cross examine this letter or what would be the process to introduce other evidence after the hearing was over.

That same student would understand that Seham and his group would have no standing to be represented in that hearing. An SLI hearing is not an open mike night where all comers get to air their grievances. Each side had designated representatives and those representatives had sole standing to introduce evidence and make argument. You can't have each pilot or groups of pilots making their own cases.

This guy did what he always does; take money from pilots with no tangible results.

Here we have typical Carl like obfuscation. He made a giant whopper and now he recycles a bunch of outright falsehoods in an attempt to cover up his whopper. Keep trying Carl.

Just to tag on to this post. I got an email from DPA today that included a letter written by a line pilot. I think he states it pretty well. (I took out the paragraph advocating DPA as the solution since that is not the point I'm making here.)
__________________________________________________ __________________
Our road since 9/11 has been long and hard. We have begun the crawl back with minor gains, yet we still have much ground to cover to restore our profession, restore our scope, restore our pensions, restore our pay, restore our medical benefits and restore our work rules.

This Business Week article was like winning the lottery. The perfect opportunity to tell our story, to say everything we all want to say.

To share the fact that we need an 18% to 20% increase in hourly pay just to match our rates from over a decade ago with no accounting for inflation.

To share the fact that our pensions were decimated.

To share the fact that our contract is still concessionary and those concessions are no longer required.

And did Captain Moak seize this golden opportunity?

No. He not only did not fight for us, he did irreparable harm to our profession.

He stated that we have "good, mature contracts" and radical overhauls aren't in the cards.

These comments are unconscionable and devastating. The hurdle we must cross to a "historic" C2015 just doubled in size with Captain Moak's comments.


In 2014, we will pay over $40 million in union dues for this type of failed leadership. $40 million for a president who not only does not advocate for restoration, but for a president who does not believe in restoration. A president who is working against us.

We can not only do better, we can do far, far better.

Did they say what they felt he meant by that? IOW, was he saying that the contracts won't change much in terms of pay, or that they generally do not need to be rewritten throughout? I could read Moak's statement either way (as you know), and there's a big difference between the two.

Not trying to start anything -- just asking about your conversation.

They gave me the same non-committal, political doublespeak answers I've come to expect from them. But, no, they didn't say what they felt he meant. They just defended what he said and suggested it was to our benefit.

Edit: I just went back and reread the email exchange. At one point, there was a reference to what one rep thought he meant by one of the quotes. But that's the thing about all this. You can do some pretty good rationalization and come up with alternate possible meanings. Whether Moak meant what it sounded like or was so inept that he didn't really think what it could sound like before he said it... either way it's bad.

While I agree with your first statement, I also agree that a 50% increase in rates over the span of a single contract may not be realistic. But why must it be one or the other? I see a pretty big span between those two extremes that may be both realistic and something that puts us on a path to restoration, if still not quite as soon as we'd like.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's 50% or nothing. In fact, given the damage that DALPA has done over the past 10 years with regards to everybody's expectations, I seriously doubt 50% is doable now.

And that's exactly the same thing I thought back in 2012. Problem is they came up with 4833, which barely made a tiny dent in restoration. Given the better economic climate today (although 2012 certainly wasn't bad), maybe they'll do slightly better than that. But without a restorative objective and WITH the same old guard guys like Harwood arguing against restoration, I don't see anything much above the bottom end of the "two extremes."

Ever seen that arcade game with a number of holes that get progressively further distance away? The further away the hole, the greater the difficulty in throwing the miniature basketball into it, right? So if you're aiming for one of the closer holes (because you just don't think it's realistic that you could hit one of the further away ones), what do you think the odds are that you're going to hit the furthest hole?

I found the transcripts for the TWA case. You're right, he did not represent them in the case. Are you saying that Seham originally represented the TWA pilots and then they replaced him with Trujillo, Rodriguez & Richard? I didn't remember them switching horses like that, but there should be record of it. I know he wrote an "Expert Report" when he was retained to do so by the attorneys representing Bensel, but if I recall correctly the judge never permitted it to be admitted as evidence because the attorneys for the plantiffs were unable to establish with the judge of the court that Lee Seham had any expertise in the subject matter relevant to the case at hand. It worked out good for him though, as he was paid at a quoted rate in the report of $300 per hour to write a 78 page expert report that was inadmissible and useless to the plantiffs at the end of the day.

Which United case were you referring to previously where he was the attorney of record and the one actually suing ALPA? I didn't know he had represented United pilots in court cases against ALPA and won. Any other cases where Lee Seham sued ALPA and won you can think of?

FWIW Carl, I'm not saying he hasn't done it. I'm only saying I hadn't heard that before and can't find it.

For me to get an accurate report of all the legal issues between Seham and ALPA, I'd have to call Seham and I don't want to spend 500 an hour for that. So let's stipulate for the sake of argument that the only legal proceedings that there have ever been between Seham and ALPA were ones where ALPA trounced him into the ground. Fine. Then why do you ALPA-oids go so insane whenever his name is mentioned? It was the very first thing you guys jumped on as soon as DPA became public. Why? Why do you fight so hard against this incompetent boob of a lawyer?

Carl

54 percent over seven years, best sick leave in the business, turning back scope in favor of mainline growth - backed by a progressive ratio of block hours, 5:15 ADG, reserve so good that I'm too junior to hold it.

Yup, "damage."