When the bully comes to take your lunch money.... you have two choices.

Choose wisely....

 

Exactly. Some of us would rather die on our feet than live on our knees. But some have been on their knees for so long, they've forgotten how to stand up and find it quite comfortable down there...

 

Spot on. He said to the people asking him to resign "I'd rather be a martyr."

 

just a curiosity for me, but how did Moak and his loyalists rise to power? were they always this way, or did they change after getting in office?

 

In his mind. I'll bet it pains him to have to deal with 12,000+ idiots.

This is how I see Rich Harwhine:

If you run into an idiot in the morning, you ran into an idiot. If you run into idiots all day, you're the idiot.*


*This idiom doesn't normally use idiot as the main point but I didn't feel like being crass today.

 

That sums it up perfectly for the entire Moak dynasty.

 

I had never heard the name Lee Moak, until he was elected as our new MEC Chairman. This was during bankruptcy in 2005 (?). I called the DALPA office to ask W. T. F. were they doing, changing horses in mid stream. Some of the conversation I had with RH I detailed in a post above.

Lee had formerly been the Executive Assistant to Bill Brown, famous for being the MEC Chairman in 1986 when we got the B Scale.

"B Scale Bill" became his nic-name. But Lee worked for him later, in the 90's when Bill Brown became our MEC Chairman...again. I don't think Lee was hired until about 87 (or 88?).

In 2004, JM was the MEC Chairman, a DFW based pilot, and had the support of the 3 DFW reps. There was an regularly scheduled MEC chairman election coming up, and like magic, the DFW base was closed the month prior to the election.

The vote for Chair was going to be close, but without the 3 DFW reps being able to vote, Lee Moak won, barely. Lee, like his mentor B scale Bill, was a management appeaser. His view of Labor was that we should work with management to solve problems, rather than fight with them, like at Eastern Airlines or NW.

After we were screwed by management, twice, in LOA 46, the 32% pay cut to stay out of bankruptcy, then going bankrupt anyway, and the BPL which was supposed to protect our DB plan, even if they did file BK...and then they said it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. So JM was not going to give the company another nickel in concessions. That's why the LM Cabal replaced him.

They were scared that Delta was going to liquidate if we didn't give them another pay cut.

LM did give the company another 15%, in LOA 51, and we've been trading QOL, Scope, Profit sharing, and other items for measly 3% pay raises ever since.

 

I would like to second that you bloviating idiot.

 

I'm going to fill in a few blanks for Timbo. He's got most of it right.

LM was FO rep in MSY. TC was SO rep in MSY.

I was based in MSY with LM and TC. It was a very small base. LM started off as a SO check airman. At this time, this was the usual way to start into the management career track. He had also transitioned from the Marine Corps into the Navy Reserve at Belle Chasse in MSY. IMO, going the management route was going to take too much time away from his Navy Reserve gig. So, he dropped the management ambition, upgraded and ran for ALPA FO rep. He was elected because nobody else wanted the job. He then dropped all of his trips for ALPA business and got his military retirement at the same time.

When MSY closed, he wrangled another ALPA position because he didn't want to have to compete for the jump seat out of MSY. Only this time it was at National as executive assistant.

 

I flew with him once, career politician, these guys are all cut from the same cloth. He was just movin on.