Congrats! Best choice out of the four.

Instant pay cuts in form of union dues and first contract in probably five years if at all.

As opposed to an in house union. ALPO does not give a rat’s a#@ about small pilot groups and neither do the Thompsters. Not enough profit and it’s a business.

According to APC, they have 177 pilots. In house representation is not a rational alternative for what I would think would be fairly obvious reasons. ALPA has a raft of problems, for sure, but ANY union is better than no union. I think maybe you're not all thinking of what's best for these guys in the pursuit of vendettas (which may be honestly come by, I've no opinion on that, never having been a member of ALPA).

Being a member of a pilot union is not just about a contract. It’s one of the most important things but there is other value as well that they will benefit from, especially as a member of ALPA, in the intervening time to when they ratify their contract. For one example, one of the first things done after certifying ALPA, is the establishment of a NMB backed process for representing pilots in disciplinary hearing with the ability to send the matter to a neutral third party arbitrator for final disposition, along with any representation before any government agency or court. To me, that is worth the 1.8% insurance premium, especially knowing that a contract will be negotiated in the meantime.

That does need an LOA before it happens in right to work states.
just raitifying an union only authorizes representation but does not change disciplinary proceedings.

My understanding is that right to work states only give the employee the right to not join the union and therefore not pay dues, or at most nothing above the agency fee. That doesn’t change the classification and rights of the employee under the RLA and also due to duty of fair representation laws, the union cannot discriminate. So regardless, they have automatically entered into status quo. And they have ceased to be at-will employees. They receive the right to arbitrate per the RLA from day one. All at no expense so far, while gaining all the rights of union, including representation at any disciplinary hearing, government agency, or court hearing. The details of the process are indeed negotiated in an LOA. This is what I was referring to in the previous post as to what is one of the first things done after certification after the appointment of interim reps.

You should apply!
I'd hate to see you continuing to suffer under the new Atlas IBT contract in a few months.

Your actions will LITERALLY speak louder than your (8ull$hit) words.

How's arbitration going for us?

I’m curious now with ALPA will Western Global go hourly instead of its current daily rate or will changes like that take time.