It wouldn't have come out of your 401k.

Not entirely true. There were some who voted for this which would have affected their dues.

I believe that the next step now will be to ask for a higher dues percentage. As for paycuts, the president is the only one who actually gets paid by ALPA. I don't necessarily disagree with giving that position a paycut. Maybe if you feel strongly about it you could propose a resolution. If you are talking about staff, they are under a collective bargaining agreement. ALPA will need to wait until their contract amendable date comes around for those paycuts.

Ironic you should mention UAL. They voted 4485-2052 against it. Their dues actually subsidize MECs' such as XJ (who all voted for this even though it would have meant more dues from their pilots). If all of them would have voted for this, it would have passed!

Maybe they should use the airline mentality.....just file for bankruptcy and impose paycuts. Luckly, we take the high road.

WISKEY72 -- I did not imply I agree with raising dues or taking dues before 401K contributions........It was meant to say that more money is one of the reasons they wanted to make this change.

Our MEC told us this would raise and additional 7 million dollars a year. Thats a large amount of paycuts for not only Prater but a lot of the ALPA employees.

No worries, it's all good. :) I knew you didn't mean it that way.

you're right there, but it would have affected my 401K. It would have lessened the amount that would AND should have gone to my 401K.

It would have created $1.4M a year in additional dues income. If they would have attempted to exempt ALL 401k contributions from duesability (the other fair way to do it), it would have been $6M a year less in dues income.

It would have calculated your dues before your 401k contributions were deducted from your gross pay. If you contributed 10% this would not have changed that 10%. Your dues would have gone up while your 401k contributions remained the same as it was before (unless YOU changed it).

Its all water under the bridge now anyways.:)

I guess ALPA is feeling the pain of the gutted pilot contracts of the last 8 years. I've got an idea: instead of increasing dues %, we improve the contracts. That way I get more money AND ALPA gets more money. Then everybody wins.

Another possible problem is fuloughs. If pilots are out on furlough they aren't getting paid and ALPA can't take a percentage of $0. I might be wrong but just an idea.

Don't forget usair switching teams

Just out of curiosity but did any of your LEC reps actually ask or poll you as to which way you wanted them to use YOUR vote. Our rep emailed us, explained everything then asked if anyone wanted him to cast some of his votes "in favor" because he was planning on voting opposed. It looks from the results like only a couple of reps (Clarence R Fox, PSA; Gregory McKinney, NWA; and Thomas Thompson, UAL) split their votes which implies to me that they actually took the time to ask their constituents what they thought.

Kudos to them and the others who attempted to vote the way the pilots wanted them to. It seems to me that something this important and potentially divisive should have been put to a full vote.