It's not dues uptake, it's member critical mass.

They can't possibly do that because they know major pilots wouldn't buy it. Their only alternative is to provide disinformation and hope they get 51%. If not, they can always choose the nuclear option of LOA without MEMRAT.

It doesn't matter to ALPA what they're screaming for, just like it doesn't matter to them what we're screaming for. It's about what is best for ALPA national.

ALPA national...by achieving their prime directive of membership critical mass.

Carl

Bar,

Here is the evidence you were asking for regarding strike over Scope/Labor Protection/Job Security:


Carl

Carl-
I have to admit that I haven't been closely following the discussion over in the DPA thread. This exchange you've been having regarding the status of scope as a subject of mandatory bargaining has caught my eye however.
I'm pretty sure that you were correct in your initial interpretaion and PCL 128 is mistaken when he states that we can never strike over a scope issue. I believe his reading of the court's opinion is in error. He's overlooking a crucial distinction between that JAL Machinist's case and our current situation.
We already have a scope clause. It is part of an existing set of "rules and working conditions". The IAM contract with JAL had none. The IAM was trying to get their very first scope language. This wasn't about the machinists who were working under the agreement. They were trying to bring new people and new work sites under their jurisdiction. It wasn't really outsourcing because that work had never been "insourced". That's a huge difference. Look at these parapraghs from the court's ruling:

The primary impact of the scope proposal does not lie in these mandatory areas of bargaining. If adopted, its principal beneficiaries would be those persons hired to fill the newly created jobs. Nothing in the RLA obliges JAL to discuss with the Union issues of immediate concern only to individuals not yet included within the bargaining unit. See Allied Chemical & Alkali Workers v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 404 U.S. 157, 179-80, 30 L. Ed. 2d 341, 92 S. Ct. 383 (1971); NLRB v. Local 445, supra.


The RLA was enacted in 1926 against a background of nearly forty years of frustration with unsuccessful legislative efforts to stabilize labor relations in the railroad industry. In unique fashion, it was drafted by representatives of the carriers and their employees and then enacted by the Congress. See International Association of Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740, 758, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1141, 81 S. Ct. 1784 (1961). Testifying on behalf of the bill which they had written at hearings which preceded its passage, spokesmen for both labor and management emphasized that "the only kind of a dispute wherein there is any danger of . . . a strike is a dispute where there is a change sought in the existing rules and working conditions."

The court goes on to talk about the fact that the IAM's current employees are already protected by a no furlough clause and their job security is not dependent on JAL's discontinuance of "subcontracting". The IAM's attempt to open up this new area of bargaining and extend their contract far beyond its current "scope" was not something that they could strike about --- but that is definitely NOT the case if you are talking about the Delta Pilot Working Agreement.
We have a long established scope clause. It is an integral and vital part of our "rules and working conditions". We have been bargaining on that issue for years. Our job security is quite clearly dependent on the strength of our scope language. That is not a subject that management can now suddenly refuse to discuss. Our situation is very different from the JAL machinists.

PCL 128 didn't post the whole opinion. He left out some crucial passages. Specifically the last 4 or 5 paragraphs. Those sections of the opinion make it clear that the court is only saying that management can refuse to bargain over scope only when the union is seeking to substantially expand the reach of its contract and the job security of the existing workers is not really at issue. They are clearly not issuing a flat ruling that scope issues can never be the subject of a dispute that leads to a release to self-help. Its only if the particular scope issue is "peripheral" that you can't strike over it. That's not the case with major airline pilots these days.

Anyway, I've babbled enough. Bottom line is -- that case doesn't apply to us. I think both DALPA and the company have a duty to bargain over scope and either party could legitimately insist on their position all the way through to self-help under the RLA.

Here's a link to the full text if you're interested:

FindACase™ | Japan Air Lines Co. v. International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

wait... PCL 128 (and replace his name for any high ranking ALPA rep) has a poor interpretation of labor law and cases????

hmmm.. who would have thought.

(PCL, next time we run into each other, beers are on me... but good grief please step back from the ALPAcentric view and learn how to read.)

and yes, he has no clue what he's talking about. just because you're in a high ranking position doesn't mean you've got it right. (another round there...)

Lovely, thanks for the scoop...

Anyone care to speculate WHEN an A/E would be run/published to accommodate this reality? Or, when the May/June A/E will be out???

FTB,

OK, I know this is going to be unpopular, but fighting wars is hard work.

The only viable strategy is to ignore the airplane, focus on the pilots and make it a unity issue. The public, courts and governments get the idea that unions need to unity workers. There is public approval for reducing outsourcing.

If we try to pick and choose just the largest (and newest) we would be specifically targeting the only profitable part of the operation, the part the management would vigorously defend and expose our economic interests for what they are.

Unity is always a winning strategy for a union. We've got much better legal and PR tools available for our use if we attack this through efforts to bring together our union and pilots who perform our flying.

Compass was the low hanging fruit ... and they had the airplanes which most violate the intent of our scope. Compass was a bankruptcy concession and we made it permanent. Compass was the place to start. Frankly, I believe the divestiture vote was intended to blow our chances at scope restoration to smithereens.

Unity is a litmus test. Vote against it and you have no role in a union, JMHO.

Yes he can. Haven't you ever seen one of his presentations (they are quite good, even if I disagree with his conclusions).

His presentation is that Delta Air Lines is performing well and that Delta Air Lines Pilots are near the top of their peer group in pay & working conditions (all true & he does deserve much credit for all of these successes). Then he dives into the idea that small jets can not be operated at mainline profitably. This concludes with when Delta makes money we make money. We can do better negotiating with a profitable company.

He touts the APA as foolish and an example of doing everything wrong.

When sitting through his presentation it was obvious that he relied on bankruptcy economic analysis to determine "small jets can not be operated profitably at mainline." In subsequent presentations he removed the obvious references to facts no longer in existence (like differences in ground handling costs) but the conclusion remained the same.

A pilot posted the presentation summary under the title "Outsourcing is Good." The insiders jumped on his head. But, the audience member got it right. Moak's economics based argument is that outsourcing helps the company make money, which benefits Delta pilots.

This of course triggered my response, where's Moak getting his numbers? Folks learned without Moak's approval no one could run an economic analysis and Moak was not giving the command to do that work. There are varying after action reports, but at the time of the vote everyone was unanimous that we divested Compass without running the numbers.

He doesn't have to sell anything in his position, "He's got his..."

He doesnt have to do anything. He did however change the "line in the sand" without memrat while here.