That's what I thought you meant.

Yes, I vehemently object to office admin making 6 figured, paid by US, when we have many, many thousands of airline pilots still making a third or less than that.

There is zero justification for that. None.

I'm not saying office admin should work 18 hours a day with no bathroom breaks for minimum wage and obamacare. But let's not get too Bolshevik about it either. I'm fine with office admin making 6 figures paid for by us...just so long as all airline pilots represented by us make an appropriate level *above* that commensurate with the staggering disparity in education, experience, skill, liability and responsibility involved.

ALPA should not be paying office admin 6 figures in light of the many thousands of pilots it represents. Period.

Trading unions is just exchanging one pile of crap for another pile of crap

A lot of truth there...at least in some cases it will save you half of your current dues bill.

Pilots without a union are doing so much better...:rolleyes:

Delta/American/United
 

Maybe its time to form a new Legacy union

.... or join the one we already have.

Not true. "Those cuts" at American before our Chapter 11 were no where near (think half in the % pay cut department) those taken at DAL in bankruptcy. What it turned out to be is the catalyst to depress AA pilot pay for over a decade only to end up in bankruptcy anyway. Were it not for the leverage the USAir deal gave them, they might well have suffered another decade of industry bottom feeding. Even so, their current situation makes for poor evidence that the AA pilots made smart moves.

Maybe it was a smart move, I'm just not convinced for whom. None of this matters where ALPA is concerned since AA pilots belong with us and would make us all stronger. THAT would be a smart move.

However, AA also never had C2K rates like Delta and United so their cuts were starting from a much smaller number. I seem to recall that AA mgmt offered "Delta C2K plus a dollar" rates around August of 2001 and APA rejected that and then 9/11 happened...

You need to go back and review the pay rates at the time. AMR never got on the big pay raise bandwagon before 911 and then took cuts soon after. At Delta we got a large raise immediately before 911 and then 4% raises for the next 3 years. The difference in cash flow on just pilot costs was huge.

This is true however, the deal that AA pilots agreed to in order to avoid bankruptcy in 2003 (which is what I thought you were referring to) did not solve AA's cost problems which lingered for years keeping their pilots at/near the bottom of their competitive set in pay. Meanwhile, even after the pillaging or our contract in BR, we recovered at a fast clip and sit today in a much better position overall. I think if you run the numbers, the evidence is scant that they made the 'smart move.' I could be wrong.

Again, the point is, they made mistakes, we made mistakes, we're all human but there is no question that we would be stronger together.