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Thank you for contacting me about anti-trust immunity. I have contacted the Department of Transportation on your behalf and will certainly share their response with you once I receive it.

If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Scope Clauses are unconstitutional, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

 

Scope clauses are fine, but they have to be practical. The main mistake the major airline pilots have made with regional pilots is to paint them as the bad guys and push to keep them out of the major airline club. If mainline pilots gave their regional airline partners an incentive to work with them instead of competing against them, there results might be more satisfying.

 

The problem with the regionals is that many pilots allow themselves to be exploited by individuals like Ornstein and Bedford. The rest is history.

Since you like to critique spelling, try using the word "their" next time.


JJ

 

At the 2000 PID merger request, DMEC/ALPA threw Comair and ASA under the bus in front of management. Today, there are nine DCI carriers. Would you care to say a few words in behalf of ALPA's alter ego policy?

Feeding the regional guys to the alligators only assured the mainliners that they would be eaten last. Think DCI = business model.

Thanks ALPA!

 

The major's pilots groups don't negotiate your contracts. Heck, the majors do a crappy job of negotiating theirs . . witness the last sweetheart contract that DALPA gave Anderson. YOU negotiate YOUR contract. While it was a big mistake to grant any scope exceptions at all a long time ago (and way before I had any say in it), that's water over the dam now. The truth is now, YOU keep YOURSELF out of what you call the major airline club because YOU negotiate crappy contracts and are willing to work cheaper than the majors. If the regional unions made themselves not cost effective to run as separate operations, then they'd be folded into mainline carriers. If you want to blame someone now, blame your fellow regional pilots at Mesa, Republic, GO, etc etc etc. Oh, and BTW that's exactly the reason the regionals have to hire 200-hour pilot-mill wonders.

If you're waiting for the majors' unions to do your job for you, you're going to be waiting a long time. Why? Because they can't. The concessions that ALL employee groups at the majors would have to make are unsaleable. So quit whinning and get to work making your own contract expensive enough to entice the major airline to want to fold it into mainline.

 

Don't tell the major airlines' highly paid and heavily staffed legal departments that they've missed this tidbit.

 

I'm not a United pilot and I sent the letter.

As for the DOT, I slightly edited and sent a letter to the Assistant Secretary for Governmental Affairs, Mr. Dana Gresham.

 

and meanwhile, the United MEC allows outsourcing of the domestic fleet.
I stand bemused at alpa national getting all bound up about this, while
50 percent or more of domestic flying is being done by pilots sentenced to a permanent second-class career at the regional.

Management will give them specious retirement protection, or pay enhancement, to buy them off, again.

 

They won't fold them into mainline. they will simply give their flying to another regional, along with the airplanes. Are you willing to fall on your sword?
Also, the lawyers negotiating and advising these mec's are usually alpa contract administrators, who have an interest in perpetuating the existince of the regional airline....

You are completely ignorant of the negotiating environment at the regionals. They have NO leverage to demand wages comparable to major carriers....