FWIW, I’m an AA guy that has been pro ALPA merger since I started here 20 years ago. APA has been a clown show and constantly gets their a$$ handed to them over and over again. But for some reason every time it gains steam, it gets shot down. I’m guessing our BOD and over half the membership still despise ALPA. You can’t mention ALPA to any former TWA, USAir East and half of native AA pilots without receiving a barrage of foul language. Oh well.

It’s not a loophole for a SLI agreement be voted in. That’s the preferred method. And it can and has also happened on ALPA-ALPA integrations as well.

A member-ratified SLI can of course open up all manner of possibilities, including the tranny scenario where they had a gun to their head to ratify or else.

Scope is a key factor, and maybe more important than any particular union, in protecting your equities in M&A. Scope can prevent management from getting too creative, ala tranny. Assuming the judge hasn't tossed it already.

What would a different name on your union letterhead accomplish? The quality of representation at a given airline is because of who that pilot group votes to represent them. Switching to ALPA wouldn’t do anything for AA if they just elect the same people to leadership positions.

who said it’s heating up? What sources? Cuz I ain’t seen nothin

Once there is an actual website for an ALPA card drive, can we say anything is “heating up”.
All I see is people blowing off steam

I don’t know if the representation or committee structure is different but as I wrote in the other thread, it wouldn’t just be about those in leadership positions, although I suspect the ones against a merger would probably not survive as the new leaders in a new merged union. ALPA National provides resources, institutional knowledge, many tools, etc that may not exist or may not be as robust. Not to mention the greater clout in DC as a lobbying group and combined PAC.

You are right about the letterhead though. The knew merged union could just as easily be called APA and still be better than two separate unions.

^^^^ Exactly. That is the #1 thing I constantly hear about switching to ALPA. And it’s a good point worth exploring, but in the end it is not so much about WHO is in office at the new AAL MEC, but how the different structure/governance/bylaws would come into play. For example, half the crap APA pulls would never be pulled at ALPA due to how officers are voted for, elected, and recalled. There is just a whole different level of accountability that we do not have at APA.
And in the end... the ALPA legacies have consistently had better contracts than APA. If that by itself is not worth exploring a switch back to ALPA then I don’t know what to tell you. APA hasn’t had an industry leading contract since, what, 1991?

Individual ALPA airlines have some flexibility as to how they organize resp, do elections recalls, etc. It's not one-size-fits all. If you're looking for someone to come in from the outside and "fix" your representative leadership I'm not sure how much luck you'll have with that. Fundamentally it's more up to you guys, although it might give you some moral high ground if your reps are deviating significantly from other ALPA groups.

There are a couple of representations structures available (base/seat and seniority block) but there is only one way to recall. And that’s by a simple majority vote of the pilots represented by the status rep. Can a new structure improve the leadership by having that sort of accountability? I don’t know. Maybe they have the same at APA and yet doesn’t make a difference? I know from my previous experience, when a rep or mec officer has gone off the reservation, they’ve been recalled or resigned before being recalled. Maybe that sort of structure is present with APA, I don’t know. If it’s the same, I would agree that it wouldn’t make any difference. But just because leadership is made up of the same people, doesn’t mean that a new structure with more accountability wouldn’t change their behavior.