Maybe. It depends which one you ask. They are not giving the same story.

Really, and management has nothing to do with it?

You ask, OK, this is what happened. Management floats the idea of binding arbitration, as they alway do in negotiations. This is standard negotiations 101, designed to make them appear reasonable while shaking the tree to see who the weak sisters may be. It worked perfectly, they now know that 6 MEC members are so adverse to a strike that they will give away their unions leverage when given the BA alternative.

Normally this type proposal never gets beyond the negotiators or the MEC Chair, however this time, nearly half of the UAL MEC members are also the MEC Chair's politicos and are looking for any way possible to avoid a major confrontation with the company. So, she, being an egalitarian surrounded by weak labor advisers, decides to have an off the record meeting so as not to embarrass her partisans.

She is smart enough that she knows the pilot group would tear her's and the MEC's heart out if they let a third party decide things like; 90 seat RJ's, CAL work rules, DAL pay scales etc. So, to give her cronies cover, she naively tries to limited communications (confidentiality and all that) and just to be safe, her communications guy leaked the notion that this was not a vote on BA but on a process that could possibly lead to some sort of BA. Well, it reminds me of the story of Pierre the bridge builder.

Management is having a stitch, CAL MEC is incredulous, even the MEC's Chair's supporters are saying ****. Alas, the membership gets what they deserve and it will not be an industry leading contract.

How do I know all of this? I don't, I just made it all up.

Baron

Baron,

THANKS. Geeeezus the lack of knowledge around this place is stunning. The number of guys who place 100% of the blame on the union is sophomoric and the number of company sycophant's wearing FOUR stripes makes me want to PUKE!

Rant over. Carry on.

And this is one of the MANY reasons she (and the ORD LEC) needs to be gone. Yesterday.

Without any direct knowledge of the MEC meeting, another systemic reason for binding arbitration to begin to rear it's head is, no indication from the NMB of any kind of release in the foreseeable future.

When one takes into consideration the sheer size (about 21%) of the UAL domestic US market share (SWA and DAL about the same), the relatively short time in mediation to date, the possibility of an administration change next year, and AMR being ahead of us, I would not be surprised.

If one buys into the notion that we may never be released based upon our size and other factors, binding arbitration gains traction as an argument...read that again...just an argument. I'm certainly not advocating.

Perhaps the MEC is just looking ahead and conducting due diligence for a number of contingencies? Speculation only. I do not know.

I have no problem with any MEC conducting due diligence and "listening" to what a company proposes. That's part of their job.

However, given the fact that binding arbitration, the RLA, and almost two decades of court cases (from bankruptcy to labor injunctions) have favored management for so long, an offer of binding arbitration from this company and this management team for this contract? I'd say "no, thank you" would be appropriate. There are still too many open issues to be worked out that the company has shown little movement on. If we are down to a couple of items here and there after some real good-faith effort on their part, then MAYBE, depending on those items, it is something to consider at that time.

If true that the company offered binding arbitration now, it is in the same playbook as breaking their word with the mediator, publishing their opening proposal and calling it DL + $1. The company can spin it as their attempt to make a good-faith effort to resolve the issue that the pilots aren't interested in after they allegedly already tried to offer us a DL + contract.

Either way, not sure what this vote was really about at the UAL MEC level, but such a split leaves me wondering what the goals and motives are for the UAL MEC.

Too bad 49% of it is flown by our regional partners. In reality, during a strike, only around 11% of the domestic market would be affected.

In terms of pure block hours your % numbers may be close, but where do most of the RJ pax connect to? Mainline domestic and International flights. If a pax buys a ticket BOI to HKG during a strike, they will only get from BOI to SFO on a scab flown RJ.

We all need to take a deep breath and stop thinking we know more than our leadership. Constantly berating our ALPA Leadership is exactly what the Company wants the hear! The failed recall attempt, the constant Tea Party-esque political bickering is playing right into the Company's hands AND shows a lack of unitiy amongst the pilots.

The Company knows they've been dragging their feet. The Company knows the Mediator knows this as well. To take heat off themselves (the Company), they attempt to put ALPA in a box by allegedly offering arbitration. If this was the case, there are three options for ALPA Leadership:
1) Outright refuse arbitration
2) Outright accept it, or
3) Put conditionals on it to make the Company reject the conditional arbitration and call the Company's bluff.

If ALPA outright refuses (1), they've played into the Company's hands and taken the heat off themselves and put the heat right back on ALPA.

If ALPA outright accepts (2), the pilots are going to be rightfully pi$$'d and the contract gets voted down.

If ALPA puts conditionals and makes the Company refuse the conditions, then ALPA is out of the box and the heat is back on the Company for dragging their feet.

That all is Negotiations 101. Also in Labor 101, a great contract is the result of a unified pilot group which means to STOP backbiting the Leadership with the idiotic political agendas!

The Arbitration proffer is nothing new. American Eagle and Alaska both dealt with it in different ways. I'm sure our ALPA leadership reviewed the historical results of both of those arbitrations. Now, can we all get behind our leadership and stop the politics?