Did they talk about scope, outsourced flying, Aer Lingus, RJ's?

They negotiate that way because their management team has placed a value on labor relations. Look no further than how they did their merger. Labor was on board or they weren't doing the deal.

Jeff doesn't subscribe to that philosophy. I'm not sure why JP can't understand that.

BTW. I'm on an airplane right now and the Captain just said: "There is something I must tell you. This flight is proudly being flown by Continental crewmembers on a Continental airplane".

Perhaps that's the type of atitiude JH received when he has tried to advance the joint negotiations.

I would be embarrassed if I were on a United plane and the crew said, This is a Legacy United Crew and we are operating on a Legacy United Aircraft. I've never heard of someone even thinking of such a thing. Aren't we ALL pilots working for a common cause. When is this "we are better attitude"going to end. It's infantile.

No sh@@##t. CAL guys, get over it, you got the United name. You didn't sign up for it, but I didn't sign up to be managed by Hillbilly airlines that thinks weak ****ty coffee is premium service. None of us wanted this merger, but we ALL want an industry leading contract. Get over it, accept circumstances as they are, grab a picket sign, and hold the line. I'm hoping we get released. We can ALL earn our battle stars in this conflict.

Our MEC blastmails as recently as last week have been instructing CAL pilots to make that announcement. Just FYI....

When this strategy first came out months back it was clear to some that CAL ALPA wanted to distinguish its self from S-UAL pilots...It,s painfully obvious now why Fred and his friends, (JP )wanted this done...There are rumors going around that JP has known about JH strategy since January...Remember by JP own admissions he and JH were on speed dial and talked a few time per day shortly after JH took office...Some time in March the communications stopped and the joint meeting never took place. PS grievances were filed against UCH. Now we come to find out that JP wants the grievance against UCH dropped as a condition for any joint MEC meetings to take place....Again this has management hand writing all over it....$40 millions dollars buys a lot of friends if one want to sell its soul to the devil.

If it is true that JP wants the UAL grievance on PS dropped as a "pre-condition" to any joint meetings than JP is nuts.

He has no standing in a seperate MEC's grievance process.

However.......National will likely drag its feet on the matter, and that I can guarantee you. That grievance will never get settled favorably for the UAL pilots. It will go to level 2 and languish, awaiting a grievance review board and be on a slow boat to China waiting for National's equivilent of the OJ Simpson legal dream team to arbitrate. I'd say in 3 years you might see some movement.

That is the real leverage here. "labor was on board...."

Well, if we want to get this moving, we need both MEC's on board with a joint strategy to advance joint negotiations that may reach a joint empasse with a subsequent joint cooling off period leading to a joint release and an implementation of an effective and well planned joint SPSC effort to affect a well executive joint JOB ACTiON .

It's all about labor stability. The value of it all boils down to dispatch completion factor, and on time performance. Co-Worker Jeff puts those two items into his bean cruncher and comes with with what you, the widget maker is worth. If those 2 metrics are affected, than that changes what you are worth. The duration of the effect further changes the formula.

It works like this:

DR +/- CF =VoP. ....Status quo daily bean cruncher formula
VoPxTime/DR+CF=LS ....Time value to BoD
VoP x Time/DR+CFx summertime(holidays)=LS ....Summer time and Holidays

DR= Dispatch Reliability
CF= Completion Factor
VoP=Value of Pilot
LS=Labor Stability

Sent out by Pierce? Why am I not surprised. Just a step to divide the pilot groups. If Jay Heppner did that I would very, very disappointed.

So ummm, why is my L-CAL MEC not asking for release? Even looking at this objectively, there's nothing good that can come from continued division. I thought the 'J' in JCBA was somewhat important...