flybywire44

My Dad is an old Piedmont 757 Driver based in CLT. So the I'm jump seating on his flight from CLT to FLL and he tells me something truly amazing about ALPA. Are you pro ALPA? Hold onto your hat.

As we all know, when the US Airways and the America West pilots arbitration award came down the award was given according to career expectation at the time of merger and not date of hire.

In response, US Airways East has elected to create a new union in place of ALPA to negotiate a date of hire seniority list for all pilots in the new contract. Seeing as how US Airways has half of their pilots retiring in four years, having a seniority based contract would only affect the America West boys for four years before they gained half of the US Air East seniority list. The Average US Air pilot age is 56! The Average America West pilot age is ~40s.

So he and the other "East" US Airways boys have the authorization to begin the year long process to remove ALPA and get a truly fair contract.

To counter this move by the Eastern US Air pilot group, ALPA National is threatening, through Capt Prater, to appoint a new MEC from another airline to run the US Airways MEC and negotiate a new contract for US Air East.

So here you have a group of pilots genuinely wanting to get rid of ALPA and ALPA National is bringing in a new MEC from another airline to finish their contract AND VOTE FOR THE EASTERN US AIRWAYS GROUP. ALPA has labeled the eastern pilot group as a Rogue Pilot Group and is proposing to take away their right to vote on a TA.

This whole setup stands against everything ALPA claims to be. So ALPA is all about ALPA and making sure they stay in business. I wonder if Prater would take a pay cut if he lost US Airways.

I normally stand behind ALPA on most issues, but has anyone seen this side of ALPA before? On a side note, if ALPA loses one more major airline the Regionals will control ALPA and have more pilots in the union than all combined Majors.

flaps 9

You've got alot to learn. Read the ALPA By-laws and code of ethics and see if you still feel the same way.

flybywire44

I don't think I feel any certain way, my family came out very well in the merger gaining 10% relativity over the list and 656/767 fleet protection from the West.

But it bothers me that a union votes ALPA out during a merger only to lose a chance to vote.

Care to be more specific Flaps 9? I'm sure if you flew the 73 for US East you'd be less condescending.

flaps 9

The reason for Prather's actions are that the MEC in the east is not doing anything to defend ALPA. It's their duty as an MEC to defend, not support, a de-certification effort.

My understanding is that the current MEC is practically supporting a new union and that's why ALPA national stepped in.

I have no dog in this fight, but it just seems that the "easties" won't give up until they get their way. They agreed to the arbitrator, they need to live by the ruling.

jetGlue

Flybywire, no time to post tonight. No dog in the fight either, but posting here can help you see from a different light. See ya tomorrow.

Hacker15e

I like that...."truly fair".

BlueMoon

By that they mean....we want to redo what we already agreed to, because it didn't turn out the way we wanted.

fr8tmastr

Yes, in 2004 Woerth had meetings chaired by Paul Rice (sound familiar) that using the executive council, changed rules to break a deadlock on the ALG MEC that resulted in ALG contract being completely eliminated. With the ALG contract eliminated the merger with PDT went on.

What was done in a nutshell was.... ALG had a policy manual, as part of the policy manual there was a page that actually stated "it is now MEC policy that all major changes in the ALG contract go out for pilot ratification" (this means the pilots themselves have to vote, not the MEC). Well you ready for this? because this page was not physically in the policy manual binder Rice and his cronies ruled that because it was not within the binders of the manual it did not count. They ruled the ALG contract and ALG are history!!!
Background note.. This page of the policy manual was there before the rest of the manual was put together. It was a work in progess. The author of this manual also stated that this was correct.

During this time Rice threatened members of the MEC with lawsuites and recievership at every meeting. I know I was one of them.

Rice and ALPA have lost their way. The only thing that will save them is a major overhaul of the "leadership"

Beagle_Lover

Prater and ALPA national have also dropped the ball w/ the Atlas/Polar merger too, what a mess ALPA has created.

fireman0174

I was a UAL-MEC committee member for a period of time when Paul was on the MEC, representing Council #11 (DCA).

A statement on the floor of the MEC that was attributed to him was that "the membership didn’t need to know or be able to vote on items the MEC discussed."

I personally never actually heard it, but several different members of the MEC and those in the audience told that to me. This was when the MEC was deep in throes of an issue that created a division as to whether the item should go to the membership, which it ultimately did.

After watching him from the sidelines, I came away very thoroughly unimpressed.