Carl Spackler

In response to the last dozen or so posts: how many of you are still willing to let ALPA be the source of our legal and negotiating "expertise" going forward?

Carl

acl65pilot

I think that is a good starting point.

IMO shooting for SWA rates is just a little low imo.

acl65pilot

Carl;
Looking zt historical trends yes, ALPA gets larger gains in section six that SWAPA has. ALK is ALPA, HI is ALPA. DAL has not had a section six since 2001 where ALPA obtained the largest gains of any organized pilot group. My position is ALPA must get it right to survive, but they have a good history of it outside of CH11. Some people just cannot stand to admit that we have not seen a successful section six in ten years. Nor has CAL, AMR, UAL, etc.

Bucking Bar

Considering the page hits this thread gets, I don't know who should be more scared. APC, or it's advertisers.

Mod this thread and Adam Smith's invisible hand will type a different uniform resource locator and the pings will pong.

Bucking Bar

"MD - Technology for the 21st Century" ... that's quite the punch line.

Douglas didn't even make it to the 21st Century.

scambo1

ACL;

I am just 1 of 12500 pilots. I am a reasonable guy despite my inability to avoid taking the random snipe when it is offered on a silver platter. I am going to guess that DAL has about 20% of the pilots completed disgusted (based on DPA cards), 20% of change from within, and 60% that will do whatever DALPA says. YMMV.

Scope was sold. Period. ALPA used it as a bargaining credit and told us that it was good for us. I am not sure that they even tried to use anything else as a bargaining credit...big picture.

We find ourselves in a position moving toward section 6 where (theoretically) we have limited leverage because we already used our bargaining credits to get C2K payrates - which ALPA (apologists?) say contributed to our bankruptcy.

We gave these payrates back in 2 LOAs pre-bankruptcy...I say that is an overdue loan (but I'm 1 guy). We woke up after a looong hangover and now we want some scope recature coupled with payrates etc. that reflect C2K + inflation or something similar.

1. We have scaled back the atlantic and AF/KLM is flying some of our trips as connections.
2. AK is flying the heart of our west coast
3. skywest and RAH arent being beaten back by our in-house union - giving them the green light to further expand.
4. A national officer tells us we can't strike over scope - which may or may not be true, but the implication is incompetence.
5. ALPA Nat'l tells us our greatest threat is Emirates.

We are darn near the cheapest yet most productive pilots in our worldwide neighborhood, yet we keep getting kicked in the nutz. Where is our strategic planning, where is our leverage. If it exists, I am not seeing it and believe me I try.

I have said that I believe in some constructive engagement when it is our shared interest, but in reality, what I see is a Lorenzo style shell game being run by colluding managements and our union is far too slow or stupid to see what is happening right in front of its face; dont see the forest for the trees.

Please help me see how ALPA is the winning team. Please, please, please.

Columbia

Rates are only a small part. Need to combine them with days off and (17-18) and average credit (110/month - 8 hours min/day).

forgot to bid

*

Scambo, well written. Painful though.*

I don't even want to make a joke about it, just depressed.

Bucking Bar

In 1999 ASA & Comair were DCI (apart from a very small SkyWest & Trans States presence). The entire argument for the merger was closing the hole in scope and just like we saw in 2008 management wanted to acquire these carriers and at that moment pilot pay wasn't the issue. Delta bought ASA to get its gates in Atlanta, prevent a competitor from forming and mostly to clean up the mess that resulted from ASA's Section 6 fight with founders George and John.

ASA already had it's initial RJ order in, which would have provided jobs for about another 700 pilots. Delta later increased this order to over 500 jets and took every one of them.

Since you complained about the speculative nature of the posts, I conceded and gave up on what is a speculative argument which does not matter now. But maybe that was an error. The real lynch pin was the change in ALPA's governance to facilitate the operation of alter ego replacement airline operations.

At the behest of the mainline members of our union, operational integration triggers were removed from ALPA's merger policy. The point being that ALPA's policy now formally accepted alter ego outsourcing of work with an airline's brand.(*)

Management has always wanted to replace us with lower paid pilots and diminish our power. The big change with the ASA PID was ALPA's change from seeing alter ego as our mortal enemy to seeing outsourcing as a partnership with management.

Today the biggest threat to our union is the outsourcing that was the result of the policy changes leading up to the denial of the ASA PID. That's arcane, but since others seem interested it is something worth discussing.

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(*) Addendum: I do not have the research at hand to prove this point, but around this time is the first we see mainline MEC's monetizing scope and using scope in bargaining. First at US Air, United and then Delta's contract 2000. This makes logical sense since ALPA would have had a conflict with its own alter ego policy prior to the changes in the Constitution and Bylaws. Of course we know the result of monetizing and trading scope. It has been argued here sufficiently to show junior members' jobs effectively were sold in exchange for bargaining credits.

My point is, the selling out of your own Council membership began with the selling out of the regional guys. Once unity was "for sale" it changed everything.

capncrunch

+ 1 Well said.