The "ugly politics" have spilled out of the room and into the CAL ALPA weekly update. I am disgusted by the events which occurred at the BOD. All this in-fighting and backstabbing results in the world's largest airline not having one pilot in a national officer position. Politics of personal destruction where rumor, innuendo and bold-faced lies rule the day.

 

Can you post it, or PM? I'm curious how it was explained from the CAL perspective.

 

If thats what you guys At DAL really want, go for it.

But we at FDX tried it already. We voted ALPA off the property in 1997.
We soon found out that ALPA wasn't the problem.(we were our own worst enemy).


We voted ALPA back in in 2002. The main reason was three fold.
1. The Cheaper Dues promise with an independent ended up costing us more. We had to hire our own in house Attorney.
We had to retain a $600/hr Labor law firm in DC.
We had to retain an ERISA Law firm which was 400/hr plus expenses.
We had to retain a PR firm that wasn't cheap.
We ended up send our Safety Committee volunteers to Herdon to attend ALPA safety schools, but we had to pay for it.

2. We had No (zero ) political clout. We aligned with CAPA which really never produced anything in the way of
Lobbying power on the Hill or any other Aviation related safety issues.

3. When the time came to really plan for our next Contract Negotiation, it was apparent we were more than likely required due to lack of funds to access every pilot between $300-1000 depending how long negotiations took.

Not picking on anybody, APA has their issues, IPA has theirs and FDX pilots under the FPA had ours as well. Then there is USAPA, need I say more?

So from one who has been down that road, Our pilot group voted out ALPA, we tried the Independent thing and then Voted ALPA back on the property by a 93% margin. FDX guys will tell you, the Grass ain't greener with an independent either.

You guys do what you need to do, ALPA isn't perfect by any stretch, but it is the best bang for the buck, we learned the hard way and it cost us almost 10 years to figure that out.

 

Tell us what he said that was a lie.

 

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