aa73

Greetings from the AA pilot group!
Lots of informal questions regarding an APA to ALPA switch lately amongst our pilot group.
Many, many APA members are very skeptical on joining a huge organization such as ALPA after decades of having an independent union.
Question, for those of you who were at CAL.
1) why the switch back to ALPA?
2) did you see any immediate/mid term/long term improvements from ALPA compared to IACP?
3) did you encounter a lot of resistance from the pilot group who wanted to remain independent and how hard was it to convince the membership to vote for a switch?

thanks for any answers, it will hopefully shed some light on what we are up against.

Dave Fitzgerald

aa73

You will have to filter the responses you get, depending on which side of the merger you were on. Be careful in your interpretations. Still a hot button with many. Not so much angry about the seniority merge anymore, but what the circumstances were at the time that influenced the direction and reasons for the decisions. So, with that said, I will try to answer from my perspective, LUA

1. At the time, many airlines were talking mergers. CO had an independent union, they switched when it looked like there was a good chance they would merge with an ALPA carrier, UAL had 2 different go's at merger talks. It was thought that if both sides were ALPA, the terms of the merger would go better and be more favorable. Better seat at the merger table based on the recently revised ALPA merger policy.
2. Can't speak to that being on the wrong side. But....one aspect that did change noticeably, was the training dept. Cronyism was rampant in the CO training center, called "Friends of Fred." Most of that was stopped in short order, and finally put to rest with the consolidation of the training centers to DEN. The 737 school was notoriously bad. The merger contract did take some time and both sides were miffed by the terms so it must have turned out about right.
3. Can't speak to this either, BUT. Since The CO union voted in ALPA. everyone was now an ALPA member--including the CO scabs. Now, UAL has it's fair share of scabs too. But the CO scabs lost a lot of their influence in the operation once ALPA was reestablished. However there did seem to still be some questionable influences from the more management friendly employees within the new ALPA on the CO side.

ALPA representation seems fairly evenly split post merger, and I think both are better for it.

As far as our organization as a union. Plusses and minuses, senior vs junior. Which mostly boils down to education of the new members. You will have quite the fight, with much different issues than we did. Reno Air, Air CAl, Cactus, US Air, TWA.....the list goes on. I know the schisms run deep, especially for the TWA pilots who feel betrayed. The questions I feel will be, are you better off with more numbers and a stronger national representation? Will you have a stronger voice in contract negotiations with a national organization? Will you have more input to the national political scene? I'd have to say yes to all of these. Forgive me, but APA, especially recently, just seems to be out of their league when dealing with AA management. Not a strong enough voice. If you were to rejoin ALPA, many of the people now running APA would transition to ALPA. But, they would have the backing of a national organization.

Vernon Demerest

With all due respect, there are better suited forum members with much more accurate history than Dave or myself. UAL was not on the radar and not the reason for the ALPA drive (but I met the great Rick Dubinsky twice in CAL crew rooms as he represented ALPA in the courting stage). Dave, your answer to his #2 question is completely irrelevant as what you described happened well over a decade after ALPA became the representative union again and as accurate as your comments are, these actions were post CAL/UAL merger. Not at all an answer to his question number 2.
Dave is correct in that merger mania was just starting (this was all pre 9/11) and even Gordon Bethune had hinted to pilots that an ALPA-ALPA merger would go down better for the CAL pilot group than going into one as an independent. It was later discovered that a Delta merger was attempted and thwarted on Super Bowl Sunday(again, before 2001). In just about any of the merger rumor scenarios being thrown around back then (America West being the exception), CAL would have ended up on the short end of the stick(seemingly, as the smaller carrier). ALPA made sense to the majority of the pilots (albeit the wholly owned Continental Express pilot group ended up being the voting block that put ALPA over the edge). Obviously the 83-85 “hire” group was adamantly against having ALPA back on property but they were joined by some of the late 1970s HIRED pilots who were full term strikers (83-85…yes out for two years)who felt stung by ALPA and the 1987 hires, many of which spent countless hours on DC-10, 747, and A-300 flight decks being brainwashed by the 83-85 “hires”. Again, there are forum members here with much better memories than I who were actually involved in the process. With CAL hiring again in the 1996-2000 timeframe and hiring the typical pilot from the same background as the competition, questions about a real competitive contract began to rise. Many thought it was time to dump the IACP and the company management wannabes that were in leadership positions within the IACP if a real contract were to be had. Continental was profitable and winning awards etc and the pilots thought it was time to go after an industry leading (or heck- at least standard) contract. Yes, worry over a merger was an equally important reason to bring ALPA back.
AMR pilots will have to look at this through their own lense as the two scenarios are much different. I wish you all the best in whatever decision you come to on this.

aa73

Appreciate the answers guys thank you. The problem on our end is that there is way too much anti ALPA resentment from the previous pilot groups who felt betrayed by ALPA. Starting with TWA, followed by USAir East and then all the ex regional guys. Then there are the native AA guys who just can’t stand ALPA for no reason other than “we left them in 1963 for a good reason.” So it’s an uphill battle. Me personally, I’ve been pro ALPA since the day I started at AA back in 2000. I just feel we’d be better represented with a much bigger and national union. Plus, APA has not delivered an ILC since 1991 and even that one was debatable. Thanks again for the intel.

jdavk

1. We switched back to ALPA due to the possibility of a merger (as previously pointed out) and also to have access to more of ALPA’s services and expertise with negotiations, safety, R&I, etc.

2. Yep - see above. We gained access to all of those resources and much more on day one.

3. From my limited perspective at the time most of the opposition came from the sc*bs and their buddies. Many of them were firmly entrenched in positions of power within the Union and company and they believed that those slots would dry up for them once ALPA was certified. For the most part they were correct, fortunately, at least on the Union side.

-JK (former CAL)

JoePatroni

As a LCAL guy this is pretty spot on. Dave F’s narrative of how the Friend’s of Fred (mostly scabs) operated is very accurate but I would add that the merger with UAL had more to do with digging them out, like the ticks they were, than the merger with ALPA. I would put that on top of the list of benefits of the CO-UAL merger, from a LCAL standpoint IMHO.

jdavk

Agreed, 100%.

JurgenKlopp

1) Merger protection was large reason, but comparing the resources of IACP to ALPA was night and day. I was a Coex guy and a more robust union then IACP was my main reason. I went to the meetings where there was IACP and ALPA presentations. IACP came across as a bumbling joke with too many scabs. Then again ALPA did send Rick Dubinsky down to Coex break room in Cleveland. He didn't actually even talk to anyone which was a little insulting.

2) First ALPA Contract 02 was basically a legacy bankruptcy contract with strong scope. Many CAL guys blamed that on ALPA. Reality was too many CAL ALPA negotiators had nothing but management ambitions. I had one of them on the jumpseat at the time and all he kept telling me about was how great our former despised VP of Flights Ops Fred was to be around.

This guy of course soon went to the dark side and has been in the middle tier management system ever since. The contract was sold by UNION leadership as sign it or CAL goes bankrupt. My friend heard Larry Kellner himself angrily say that was not true right before the vote.

After Contract 02 we just had a series of worthless MEC Chairs (Snake anyone?) who refused to ever battle the company. We were always told to suck it up and it would be fixed in the new contract. That didn't work itself out until joint list. Many non scab old timers told me that CAL ALPA wasn't massively better then IACP. IMHO blame for that lies with the CAL pilot group. We were our own worst enemy cause everyone came from their former airline tribe. We used to judge each other by our employee numbers back then.

UAL ALPA has a lot more committee involvement at the local level which I prefer. The communication system is also light years better then anything CAL ALPA ever produced. UAL ALPA has strong contractual language and grievance history to back it up. CAL ALPA usually told us to grieve a violation and wait, but rarely did big change come.

3) As others have said most resistance was 83-85 related. I had to hear scabs moan about how we had our own union and how much of their money was being wasted to help me have a career. PUKE. Sadly these guys ended up on the top of list after merger enjoying benefits UAL ALPA pilots had earned before they crossed the CAL picket line. CAL guys hired in the 90's and the Coex group were firmly behind ALPA.

Basically ALPA was sold to the CAL/COEX group as a more expansive tool box along with the merger protection. CAL never really took advantage of the resources. That was largely due to the pilot group and extremely pilot negative management team.

biigD

Appreciate the responses, gentlemen. Great idea for a thread, aa73.

EMBFlyer

Like Jimmy Tripson refusing to EVER let any COEX guy ride his jumpseat?