Originally Posted by 80ktsClamp

I love it... someone asks about the union actually doing real analysis on the cost benfits of insourcing, then a union guy comes on and says "we're doing it." When taken a bit deeper, that seems to not be the case. The other unionoid comes on and throws some numbers out there which were quickly taken to task. Cue defending and circles and attempts at fancy wording to look smarter with more info by unionoids which is quite transparent.

Why do our union guys try to justify the outsourcing?? This is ridiculous. Then they wonder why there is a push to get rid of this ALPA?

Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

I submit to you ALPA's only reason for existence is to require management operate the airline with seniority list pilots. Without seniority list pilots, there is no ALPA.

Originally Posted by Sink r8

Bar,

Sorry, I was editing as you were answering.

My understanding of that situation is that we met, and offered to work an arrangement, along the lines of a staple, but ASA/CMR wanted to force a ...PID (not sure what that stands for, but to force a declaration of a merger), to trigger the merger policy.

Is this not correct?

There is of course no way that would have been acceptable to the Delta pilots, just as we couldn't agree today, to any combination without a pre-negotiated list. Which would have to be essentially a staple.



I'm not sure they're "against recapture", but I see your rationale, even if I disagree about the RJDC issue. There was also a desire in C2K to get rid of Express. Many pilots referred to Express as a cancer. If only we could have that kind of cancer again! I would be open to creating an operation that brings RJ's in-house, whether it's labelled as "cancer", or "B-Scale", if the pilots were on the list, and our contract. It's a lot better to have tailored work-rules and payrates for smaller jets, than to have them outsourced.

Be my guest for the last word, I have to wrap-up.

Regards,

Sink r8

Originally Posted by sailingfun

DALPA does not merge airlines. DALPA does not merge seniority lists. Both are controlled by management.

Originally Posted by shiznit

How much leverage does an NMB "STS" determination carry WRT to merger/acquisition/fragmentation/section 1 language?

I know the STS forced Republic to merger "accept" the Frontier/Midwest/Chataqua/Shuttle America/etc. pilot lists to be integrated....

Originally Posted by CAAC ATP

Can't really blame him. For a junior pilot, the cost of displacement and commuting to NYC equates to about a $5000 a year pay cut when considering crashpad, transportation, and food expenses. Combine that with three backward AE's and the prospect of drawn out contract negotiations, and FedEx looks like the promised land.

Personally, I'm here for the duration, but I can certainly understand the thought process.

Originally Posted by Timbo

Sink r8, be careful what you ask for! Remember, Express was composed of formerly MAINLINE 737-200's, that we then took a huge PAY CUT, to keep, only because Mo'Ron threatened to sell them, just like he did the DC9's in 1993. So, yeah, we kept the airframes, but at a huge pay cut and a two year lock on if you bid Capt. on it.

Meanwhile, all those Mainline 737-200 Captains and F/O's, in CVG, ATL and DFW, were DISPLACED off of it, as it was put into Express in MCO. I was just about to bid Capt. on the 737 in CVG when that all went down, so I remember it well, and how I moved backwards in the right seat of the MD 11 for the next several years, as with every displacement bid those former 737 Capt.s come onto the right seat of the MD 11.

So if tomorrow, Richard says, "Hey, we want to start a new, Low Cost Airline in Orlando, and we are going to use our MD 88's and we are going to pay the Capt.s $100/hr..."

Would you (any of you) vote yes to that?

That's about what happened with Express and POS 96, which I voted NO to.

Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

No.

The history of this dates back to the beginning of aviation. E L Cord, the founder of American Airlines was first and foremost the owner of competing conglomerates.

Errett Lobban Cord - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He, and other airline progenitors would commonly replace their pilots, getting rid of those who demanded more pay to compensate for greater risks, or experience (IE seniority). When pilots refused to fly in hazardous conditions and risk others' lives, those pilots would be fired and replaced with new, junior pilots.

Eventually the pilots followed the labor movement and unionized. In some cases they saw pay raises of 500% over time.

After deregulation there was a massive and permanent decline in revenues that airlines receive for their product. Today we are only beginning to see the stabilization of a decline which has been ongoing since 1978. Airlines have floundered in a vicious economic cycle (which appears to have always been the case to folks in our generation, but it wasn't). Pay was wildly out of step with revenues and concessionary contracts are always a hard sell.

The easy solution was a "B scale." Most everyone knows what that is, but for the uninitiated, "B Scale" was much lower pay for new hires who performed the same work, on the same airplanes. It was unfair, since those hired earlier got paid much more.

As more and more pilots who had experienced "B Scale" rose in the ranks of the airlines, they gained political power within ALPA and demanded that the unfair "B Scale" be ended. Our current generation of ALPA leadership well remembers "B Scale" and how it negatively effected their careers.

I think the first move to outsource B Scale flying was at Eastern Airlines under Babbit (but I'm not sure). Babbit is about the only former ALPA leader who has talked openly about what he considers to have been a mistake to move B Scale (small aircraft) flying off the seniority list.

By the time Charles Giambusso (former Delta MEC Chair) came along, every major airline had engaged in outsourcing small aircraft flying. US Air probably had the most, on a percentage basis, when the question of Comair came along. Small aircraft flying was seen as a problem, a stepping stone, a pariah, to mainline lists. Worse, having used outsourcing as a method to eliminate hated B Scale, small aircraft flying on the list was perceived as a threat. Just as the B Scale pilots had wrestled control away from their oppressors, the B Scale guys feared the next generation would take control from them and lavish negotiating capital on increasing pay on smaller aircraft AT THE SENIOR PILOTS EXPENSE!

While this happened at every major airline, the effect was particularly acute at Delta, where you had excellent labor relations with management and a lot of military pilots who had done pretty well working for Delta. For the most part, the Delta pilots saw less need for the sort of "unity" used to fight management compared to pilots who had come to age in EL Cord's time. The Delta MEC and Delta pilots saw nothing to gain and much to lose by pursuing unity with pilots who performed their outsourced flying. Delta management had always been benevolent and the concepts of "unity" which were a religion to some within our union were considered something of a quaint notion at Delta, if the concept of "unity" as a way to fight management like EL Cord's was understood at all.

Today we are at a crossroads. The experienced hands say "trust us, Delta management has our best interests at heart." The junior pilots see nearly half the airline outsourced in a decade and are fearful of just the sort of alter ego replacement EL Cord (and early airline managers) did as a matter of routine.

It is my opinion airline management has not changed. Delta at one time was a very unique Company that has adapted and changed becoming like its competitors and now leading them. There is no doubt Richard Anderson has been a good steward of the corporate entity. However, any quaint notion that Delta network management approaches their job with warm and fuzzy feeling about Delta employees is ridiculous. These are numbers men and they approach your career with the certainty and coldness that are the result of purely mathematical calculation. In other words, EL Cord's sensibilities tied to a lightning fast computer and only filtered by a sense of political correctness and legal restraint.

We need a return to our roots, unity. Nothing has changed in aviation. Just as in Cord's day without unity we will be replaced by junior pilots willing to perform our work for less, willing to sacrifice working conditions and willing to sacrifice safety.

I don't see this as a matter of economics. It is a matter of survival. Logically it follows that if ALPA fails to unify their pilots, ALPA itself will be the first to fail. By the time the DPA supporters figure out their plan is ineffective all will already be lost. The answer to preserve our union, our careers, our pay and "Delta Air Lines" as we know it is unity ... we have to get to Delta pilots performing Delta flying.