The DAL rep no votes!!!!
 

I saw this on another board, unbelievable:

Guys I believe this is hugely important so I cut and paste the reasoning from the Council 1 reps for those not in the council who may not have seen their letter today:

"For the record, your LEC reps (Steve and Ron) voted “No,” meaning “do not send it to the pilots.” You may wonder why we voted not to send the agreement out for member ratification, and the answer is simply that the TA did not meet your Council 1 direction to us. We are elected to represent you. Through phone calls; e-mails; text messages; face-to-face conversations at LEC meetings, lounge visits, and PUB events; and, yes, the contract survey, you gave your direction to us, and the agreement simply does not meet that direction."

Take the time to digest that statement. These guys saw the survey results and they believe that the TA does not meet the direction given to ALPA through the survey.

Very disappointing, I never thought I would say it but I cannot support this organization any longer.


VOTE NO!!!

Yep.. this thing undershot the contract survey. Absolutely amazing... the sales job is coming!

Kudos to Steve and Ron and the other NO reps, stones to the rest of the political koolaid drinking chickens:D RECALL FAST!

TEN

So, the other 14 guys who also saw that info must have not have been paying ANY attention?

I mean that would lead me to believe that roughly 9000 pilots had reps that don't look out for them...

Wow. 14 reps were really against their own pilots? That is crazy... Who is in charge of picking reps? :rolleyes:

No, just good soldiers falling in line. As a North pilot I admired the way the South MEC was cohesive(at least in public) in the SIL vs the constant sniping that we had. Not so much now. They could have done better and we deserve better. Disappointed...

What a novel idea.................. LEC reps actually representing the ideas and wishes of those who put them in office, and not being sheep led to LM's den!

Kudos for ya'll!!

Yep, Steve and Ron have held up their job as our representative for our base. Now it's up to us to determine how we'll vote.

Does anyone know where we can go to get the official source on how each rep voted?
Not doubting anyone here, I just want to see it in writing so these sheep can't hide from there decisions.

I respect these NO voters no more--and no less--than the rest of the MEC. They did what they are supposed to do. They participated in vigorous debate, examined the details of the TA, and then asked themselves, "is this TA worthy of my yes vote to send to the membership for ratification?"

After asking that question, and considering all the aspects of the TA, the answer for them was clearly "NO."

That is great! But if the answer was "Yes" then that would have been great too.

To say that no voters are somehow more "noble" than the yes voters is childish thinking. That's like saying your fellow citizen is less a citizen because they voted for a different candidate than you did for senator, president, etc.

What matters is did the reps take their job seriously and vote accordingly? They absolutely did in this case and I respect the hell out of them for doing so, and didn't fall in line for the sake of a "united front" or something like that. That is all that the membership should require.

Uh...every one of these reps will be in the lounges talking to their pilot groups for the next several weeks--no hiding.

I love your statement "not doubting anyone..." then immediately following it with an insult.

I'm inclined to vote against this TA, but I won't demonize those who won't think the way I tell them they should think.

Well said. Its easy to disregard any post where the poster has to resort to personal attacks. Its all to common on the this and the Dalpa forum. I once had a interesting conversation with a Eastern Pilot. He said beware the radicals and those always demonizing everyone else. I asked why and he said those that talked the biggest game were the first to crack when the realization set in that the airline might actually fail. They went from don't give a nickel to do demanding the union do anything to save my job. They were far and away the biggest group to cross the picket line. Whenever anyone has to resort to name calling and personal attacks to make a point you have a instant read on their character.

Yup, your right. My statement was out if line and uncalled for.

I just can't help feeling insulted with this TA.
I probably shouldn't but I do.

Granted tensions are running high and name calling won't help it.

I was not trying to say that some reps are more noble than others, the real point here is that we spoke through the survey but the MEC ignored our wishes.

That is absolutely a violation of their duty to represent us.

Is it possible that some of the YES votes did so, so that A) the pilot group could see the offer from MGT and b) let the entire pilot group vote it up or down

??

Maybe. But if they have serious misgivings and pass it on to "let the pilots decide" they are playing a very dangerous game. Do they represent us, or not? Any rep who downplays, or discounts the importance of giving away more 70-seaters, or any of the other give-backs in this agreement designed to mitigate the cost of the minor improvements deserves to be called on it.

The 81 reps have already endorsed it. Without acknowledging the portions that are less than ideal, they are using their position to sway the average 'clock-in, clock-out, go home and think about football' guy in an inappropriate manner. And I like and generally trust those guys.

I don't trust salesmen.

Bluto,

Two questions.

First, and I don't know how much traction the DPA really has at DAL, but wouldn't an early agreement/TPA pretty much make the DPA moot? Is that the hidden agenda?

Second, are you a former 560th guy?

Guess that was really 3 questions.......

Frats,
Lee

Well the MSP and DTW updates state they voted NO. The other was a SEA Rep. From that we can figure out who opted voted YES.

Glad to see someone gets it...I hear a lot of DPA talk...but very little action to change APLA...run or campaign if you don't like the reps. I wonder what would happen if all that DPA energy and money went into changing ALPA....humm, just a thought

I wonder how the MEM reps would have voted...

I would think that sort of thing should have been made official.
How else are we supposed to decide which reps to vote for in an election?

The way they sit on the issues and the way they vote should not be a secret.

DeadHead,

I don't know if the Reps are required to disclose their vote. I really don't. I did see the Council 66 pilots disclose their votes via publication, as well as MSP and DTW.

[QUOTE=Herkflyr;1193786]I respect these NO voters no more--and no less--than the rest of the MEC. They did what they are supposed to do. They participated in vigorous debate, examined the details of the TA, and then asked themselves, "is this TA worthy of my yes vote to send to the membership for ratification?"

Hi Herkflyr,
I would take issue with this part of your post. The thought where "...is this TA worthy of my yes vote to send to the membership..." It appears that this is not the charge that the reps have been issued. Nor does it fall into line with what O'Malley stated, that "...we hear you loud and clear..." (maybe someone else can provide the exact context of his quote,) but the gist is/was that this representative body WOULD yield to and represent the constituency wishes as indicated in the contract survey. THAT sir, I respectfully suggest, is the question that the representatives should've asked themselves.

I hope that we have stand up guys like Steve and Ron on board at the new DPA. If ALPO tries to sell us this POS T/A... the DPA cards will roll over night. :mad:

Here's an alternative way to look at this. These guys know eher votes are the entire time, even if positions change. It must have been obvious that the NO's wouldn't prevail. Once you know you're close to 50% YES or more, if your job is to represent the Delta pilots, there is no reason not to forward this to the membership, because it's ultimately up to US to call this one.

A lot of pople are upset about this TA once they see it, but imagine how many would be outraged we would be if we didn't get the TA to even consider?

So what on earth did those guys do last week? Ask your reps how much time they spent in constructive debate, maybe engaging the company on better terms, and how much they wasted arguing against a position that all knew wouldn't prevail, and was probably moraly indefensible.

What was the gain from the four NO's, who do they benefit, and what was the price of spending a week arguing?

So what if we collectively vote no and the company says "OK, here's the exact same deal except the pay rates go up one penny." Do we then send almost the same thing back out for a vote? Keep in mind every time we send something for a vote, its months delay, road shows and having to start over when its rejected. In my hypothetical one penny example above, we would expect and demand that those unacceptable offers not be brought to a vote for obvious reasons.

We can't let the company control the process by forcing popular votes on anything on their terms. We need reps in there to say "no, that is not good enough" and by default that means there will be offers we never see. Otherwise its a blitzkrieg of unacceptable trial balloons until they wear us down, delay the game forever or lock us into a high water mark of never, ever getting more than 50%+1.

Hi Gloopy,

First paragraph makes sense, and I would add you're forgetting our own role in this. We'd have to negotiate a follow-on TA. The company doesn't just get to publish TA's if there is no agreement. Our side sets up ratification votes, not theirs. Which means there is no way in [deleted] we'd be able to poll the membership to determine exactly what else needs to be included. So it's pretty much just as the union said, the comapy said, and you proved: it's this track, or the other track. This is the best we could do in this track... so what do we want to do now?

We do need reps that can send something unsatisfactory back. We had a vote. 14:5 thought we should see it over not see it. The 14 is just as suspect as the 5, BTW, and it tells you something about MEC politics, but I agree this TA doesn't need to be hidden.

But last week we were pounding our fists demanding to see thsi thing. I think there would have been mobs with pitchforks if we didn't get to vote on this. A lot of people will be publicly hostile to this TA, many privately on the fence. But I doubt many people feel tat they shouldn't get this product to vote on.

We all just wish it was better, but that's an entirely different matter.

I do think you'll agree with me that it will be important for the MEC to at least explain how/why they thought the TA is consistent with the survey. The no-voters say it isn't. Inasmuch as I don't normally value pro-con papers, I'd like some forensic work done on this thing pronto.

When is the vote?

I am a curious bystander here, and if I have missed it through the thousands of threads and posts by you guys, then I apologize, I can't sift through it all.

We have a TA now no matter what. So of course its going to be voted on by us. Fine. But if we send it back with clear directions that its not nearly enough, I'd expect the second TA to be significantly better (and really better, not a bunch of cost neutral money shuffling).

If we can't get a mutual agreement, we head into mediation, way earlier than usual thanks to our current language. We head towards self help in an already accelerated process and further expidite it by minimizing the number of open items. The NMB doesn't just sit on its hands and pressure labor. The company is also pressured, especially if the number of open items is reasonable and all we're asking for is profitable LCC parity for 130 seaters and up from there and profitable LCC parity scope. Put the ball in the company's court and force them to negotiate with themselves to keep the large RJ's they have.

What if a second TA is not better? Or it takes a year to get another 3% in pay? Was it worth it?

The large raises some guys expected were never going to happen. This TA is below what I expected, but not so much below to take a chance on voting it down.

That's ...not even close to what I'm hearing from reps. The agreement is non-prejudicial, so the language cannot, by definition, be re-used as the basis for another discussion. Don't want to play that fear card, but I believe Plan A is the normal track, this is Plan B, and there is no Plan C. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see us tweaking B, and turning it around in any sort of reasonable timeframe, for the logistical reasons you outlined above.

As for better TA's the second time around, there is a recent precedent for this, both at NWand DAL: the JCBA. As you may recall, we took the second deal struck with the company, because we couldn't agree on the first.

It was worse than the first.

The real disappointment is the company is willing to risk putting a super-marginal TA on the table. This may have been a dumb move. But, no matter what we try, we can't force them to voluntarily offer terms early, that they don't want to offer. Maybe they miscalculated, but they sure didn't give us an option to toy around with this, and maybe send it back, and maybe get something better, or maybe get these terms back early in the Section 6 process in case that's what we feel like. This deal comes with a window, June 30th if I read Anderson's (semi-insulting) memo correctly. Then it goes away.

That's why I said elsewhere it's beautifuly, perversely crafted to pass. That's also why our reps came out with that look on their face.

ALPA is a poisoned well.

Even if we recall every single rep, we're still stuck wasting money on a "union" that must look out for RJ pilots as much as they look out for us. Our interests are subjugated.

How much juice was spent to get the "ALPA carrier" hiring requirements in our TA? I don't think that was anywhere in the survey.

While the initial raise is less than it should be, that's not even my major malfunction with it. Net work rule concessions (300 less pilots by our own admission) another large amount of DC-9-10 replacement jets at the labor busters (lost leverage that we will be saddled with in C2016 by the way as we try and keep our rates up on our new used orphaned "hundred seater" 717) and the preservation of an insane and insunting vacation day rate just to name a few.

We are funding the company's DCI fleet plan, we are funding our work rules with our work rules, we are funding our "raise" with some profit sharing and we are funding the retirement bubble by paying for an early out that helps the company big time.

I could live with the rates if we got a significant increase in work rule/soft money and started to reduce large RJs. Without being single issue at all, this TA falls short in so many areas and that's OK...send it back and get it right.

So many posts,so little memory,but haven't people posted that there are scope hawks on ATL 's LEC?

One of my yes voting reps told me that he wanted us to make the determination. He didn't want to be acused of hiding the information from us. He was very disappointed in the TA.

None.

Use your head.

In the last hiring cycle, DCI pilots made up over half of the pilots hired.

No negotiating capital spent there.

It is management's job to figure out what could pass by 50.1%. This is a pretty good TA, short length and all. Accessing what our competitors are doing (No help whatsoever), this TA is light years better than what UA/ AA/US have. Not great, but not bad.

Quite frankly that was one of the few items in the TA that has my complete support and respect.

That part is pure unadulterated union stuff. It's long been my chief complaint about ALPA. An organization that has somehow forgotten why and how ALPA exists.

This is one of those few instances where someone remembered and insisted and recognition of that is in order.

Cheers
George

Very well stated.

I was sitting in the crew lounge today in msp, and listen to one of my rep answering some questions. All i could think of to ask was about Section 1, and we both understood the importance of how the ratio will be enforced, and we both agreed the pay issue is not on par with what we asked for. He didn't seem to think the reserve rules change is gonna affect manning formula significantly, and some of that will hinge on the new FTDT as well. He was disappointed that the TA got sent to membership though it wasn't unanimously passed in the MEC level. If they sent it back to the NC, and tweak it a bit before we've seen it, he thought it would be for the best.

Overall it wasn't much of a sales job, just some information exchange. Don't shoot the messenger, but he guesstimate the TA will pass around 65%.

I agree completely.