Rama

Atlas is currently under arbitration. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

fcoolaiddrinker

Normally arbitrators are selected through a process of elimination. Both side have to agree arbitration is needed. Mediation or continuing mediation is much better. There’s a list of available arbitrators. If one cannot be agreed upon I throw one out you throw one out and so on. Based on the limited amount of info in that article sounds like the two sides were pretty far apart on payrates and potentially retirement and insurance? It’s surprising that Alpa would agree to arbitration at that point. Any Alaska pilot available to chime in on the details at that time?

9mikemike

We had an Arbitration side letter in play from previous contract agreements years before…The arbitration side letter was a one shot deal… If it ever was used it terminated so to get rid of it we had to use it….Kasher was bought and paid for by Alaska Airlines. On May 1st 2005 I went from 133 ish an hour to 87 an hour. We lost all of our conflict language ie trips touching . Net result for FO’s was a cumulative 50% reduction in take-home pay…Top of scale captain pay was 198.50. It dropped to 165 ish. By the next contract cycle in 2009 we were furloughing pilots….The 2009 contract gave us nothing but we did agree to end the pension going forward….We had pilots on furlough until 2012 so by the 2013 contract cycle we were completely dysfunctional and voted in another contract with nothing other than 200 an hour for captains….It is known as contract 200. Our next contract was sidelined by the Virgin America merger. Chinaflue took care of the next contract cycle and as of today we essentially are at an impasse with Alaska Airlines. We truly have an empty mid 90’s contract and in 20 years the only part we have increased is hourly pay rate by 63 dollars….

fcoolaiddrinker

That’s pretty frustrating that one guy could influence the next 2 decades the way he did. I watched f9 lose arbitration after arbitration for several years on legitimate grievances. Clear language was just disregarded. It was so bad that in our new agreement we had to name the arbitrators that could be used if needed in a pbs implementation Loa. The majority of these guys are not on the side of labor to put it mildly. Thanks for the info.

dera

The problem with arbitrators is the RLA. The company is always right, unless the union proves that they are wrong. And the burden of proof is always with the union. Company can just say "no matter what the words on the paper say, this is what we meant when we agreed on this language", and then union has to prove that this is not correct.
It is not a level playing field.

fcoolaiddrinker

pretty much. Intent. When intent is a problem, and it always is for the reason you mentioned, it becomes practice then industry standard. Disputes help with practice argue your not in agreement. If you don’t have those your done and would have to go the Loa or settlement agreement route.