Thanks shiz. BTW, beer drinking and forum surfing go hand in hand.

This line of thinking is one of the main problems with our union. If a rep is unable represent the will of the majority and instead wants to substitute his "best judgment" then that rep should do the honorable thing and step aside.

We've been down this road too many times before and it has got to stop. The shear arrogance of "I know better than you," "I know things you don't know," "we'll never see the "3" and "3", yada yada yada, has GOT TO STOP.

Absolutely they should disregard "THEIR" information and do the job they were elected to do- REPRESENT THE PILOTS. Not substitute their secret knowledge for the collective wisdom and desires of the majority.

Shiz,

Thanks for volunteering.

Well okay... But that seems to me like a pretty ineffective way of looking at it. If you lost 42% in an investment, and 10 years later you were still 34% down (which means you still need 51% to get back to even), would you think you'd made "significant progress" toward recovering the lost value of the investment? Would it boil down to you are where you are and not where you want to be? Or would you consider that maybe what you've been doing isn't working?

I doubt they'd be much smaller, if any. But even if they were... would you rather the numbers be where they are now and give up on the idea of restoration? Or would you rather see at least some effort to try and recover what was lost? What we have now is clearly not an effort to restore our profession and our careers. It's an effort to get "the most we can at every opportunity"... as defined and judged by the MEC without much regard for what the pilots they represent think. And that definition they're using is clearly much lower than restoration. The thing that really makes it bad is that we've set expectations and set the tone that we're pretty happy with our progress and that we do not expect anything like restoration going forward. That Lee Moak interview in Bloomberg/Business Week is a perfect example of what I'm talking about!

I truly hope I'm wrong, but I don't think that "conversation" (if it even takes place) will be taken seriously in 2015 either. Reference RA's quote about labor unrest being off the table and, again, Lee Moak's quotes in the Bloomberg/Business Week article. We have no credibility in terms of asking for restoration. We have a 10 year long track record demonstrating that we don't expect anything of the sort.

I don't think you can put forth an argument for the kinds of improvements it would require for restoration without including the context of where we were and where we are now. Otherwise, it just sounds completely unreasonable.

So I don't see how you can have it both ways. Either your objective is restoration, which means very large, what would normally be considered "unreasonable" increases to recover from the unreasonable cuts we took. Or you consider those unreasonable cuts to in fact be "reasonable" and to have established a new baseline from which we only seek reasonable improvements. The latter, of course, is where DALPA has been coming from and, by all indications, is continuing to go. And I've seen nothing from DALPA to indicate a change in that paradigm.

That is one point of view of how a representational system should work -- that each rep's job is to carry out specific tasks put upon him by his constituents, regardless of what effect he believes that performing those tasks will have on those constituents. The opposite point of view is that each rep's job is to guard and advance the best interests of his constituents as he sees fit.

Most representational systems seem to borrow something from each of these points of view to find a happy medium.

At least your honest, I'll give you that.

This is the same line o' crap that got us 4/8/3/3. It's no wonder so many are disenfranchised with the system.

Sorry Alan but this type of thinking needs to end. The reps need to do the will of those who elected them regardless of their personal beliefs.

Thanks, I guess. I'm just talking about the two bookends of how a representation system might work, and how I've seen most of them work. Not giving an opinion one way or the other.

Sorry, but I disagree. I don't expect my rep to act as the puppet of the pilot group. I expect him to learn much more about the circumstances surrounding our careers and future prospects than I ever care to, and to use that knowledge to advance my career to the greatest extent possible and along the lines of my desires. To the extent that he does not meet my goals and/or expectations, I expect him either to adequately justify his actions or step aside.

That is the true essence of a representational democracy.

Now...the rest of the story.

This illustrates just one of our problems within DALPA. Shiznit, you were an elected rep, but were not re-elected. You were replaced by a rep that is not voting like a management puppet...which is exactly why the pilots in that base voted for him. But when this happens, DALPA makes sure they find a spot high up for you in the MEC administration. A line pilot that wants to "volunteer" on the MEC administration could not get the "volunteer" position you have shiznit. And THAT'S the problem. The pilots routinely toss out reps in favor of reps who say they won't be puppets, but those reps who are tossed simply find their way back to DALPA in admin positions. Is there any wonder why we have this utterly dysfunctional relationship between reps and the MEC administration?

As I've said many times before, our problem is not with our reps. Even though I strongly disagree with the behavior of some of them (like Nestor), they either do the will of their pilots or they won't last long. The problem is our MEC administration. Donatelli and his team are a tremendous disappointment. He's running things every bit as top-down as did Moak and O'Malley, and he's doing so with a team of shiznits. Sad.

Carl