Council 12 Update
10-29-2012 | 05:34 PM
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Council 12 Update
Fellow Council 12 pilots,
SABRE MOU:
Management has finally agreed on an MOU with your union. This MOU is clear in not allowing management to implement SABRE flight plans until the product is complete, functional, safe, and to ALPA’s standards.
If you are scheduled to attend a SABRE class, you no longer require an order from the Chief Pilot to attend. We want to thank those strong unionists that held management to the same standard management holds us, by requesting an order from the Chief Pilot before attending the SABER class.
“I have a contract, and I intend to enforce it.” –Glenn Tilton
Attached are two documents: the original LOA for the 400/777 (FlyWize LOA) and the recent MOU for the 757/767 (SABRE MOU). The prior is referenced in the latter.
Tentative Agreement:
You recently received a letter from Master Chairman Heppner. As he describes, the TA is “nearing completion”. In anticipation of receiving the TA, on October 29th, the UAL MEC will convene in Phoenix, together with the CAL MEC.
There has been much speculation passed around recently. Those of you that have contacted us regarding rumors will recall that we do not engage in discussing rumors. Hopefully, we will have the document before both MECs, simultaneously, and receive a thorough briefing from the attorneys/negotiators, the JNC, subject matter experts, and MEC committees.
As many of you have pointed out (and as we wrote), the minute the TA is placed into our hands is the moment that the announcement of a TA should be made. Much of the consternation and confusion of the last THREE MONTHS is directly attributable to the announcement made on August 2nd. That lesson must be inscribed in this history.
In addition to the TA itself, there will be two additional documents for MEC consideration.
First is a Letter of Implementation. This document details how the new aspects of the JCBA will be implemented. In the past, management implements what is beneficial to them immediately following the signing of the contract, while pilots wait for months and years to have their improvements implemented. This document is not time based, but event based. This means that management does not get to implement something important to them until something important to us is implemented first.
Second is a Process Agreement regarding Retro Pay. Disputes, which arose after the negotiations of the issue, have made this agreement and the arbitration it describes necessary. Therefore, the issue will be heard in an expedited arbitration starting October 31st, with a decision by November 5th.
We have heard from many of you regarding the retro pay calculation. Rest assured that your council officers WILL NOT entertain any distribution model that resembles anything from our past. Our position on this issue has not changed since the last time we spoke of it in an update.
We anticipate being in joint session until November 6. Once the TA is fully briefed and MEC members conclude their Q & A, the two MECs will meet independently to decide whether to accept or reject the TA. If both MECs accept the TA, then it will be released to all 12,505 pilots for membership ratification. As we previously reported, we expect this to take approximately 30 days.
During this time period the Negotiating Committee and the MEC Officers will commence a roadshow tour at all domiciles. In addition to roadshows, there will be various media distributed and available to all pilots. You can expect a Council 12 meeting during this period, in addition to the roadshow meeting.
We encourage you to make every effort to attend a roadshow and inform yourself intimately with the TA before casting your vote. We encourage you to ask many questions at the roadshows to ensure that all of your concerns are addressed.
It will be most useful if all of us avail ourselves of every opportunity to learn about this contract prior to attending a roadshow. Better questions and greater insight will be the reward for doing the work.
Whether it’s called a Roadshow or a Town Hall Meeting, these meetings are for the transfer of information, and the receipt of opinion, your opinion. Should the TA be accepted by both MEC’s, the meeting objective becomes information distribution. There will be no selling of anything to anybody. This JCBA must sell itself on its own merits.
Do not expect any substantive updates on the TA while we are in session in PHX. The NMB Gag Order is in place until the TA is released to the pilots for ratification. An amendment to the order was granted to allow the MECs to be jointly briefed.
Since the August 2nd Master Chairman announcement of an Agreement in Principle on all major sections of the contract, we have asked you to be patient and allow the JNC the necessary time to re-write the contract in final language. This is not a modification of our current contract, like the Delta negotiation. We have been told that the full re-write is necessary to detail explicitly each section and it’s meaning, in an effort to mitigate differing interpretations by management. The intent of this effort is also to mitigate the need for filing grievances. The future will write that story.
Nine-hundred or so days later, we are almost there…
We will have an update for you by November 6th, 2012.
Secondary Barriers:
As has been reported in the media, Mr. Smisek has been criticized for saying one thing and doing another. Mr. Smisek says: Safety is our number one concern. What Mr. Smisek does is different. UAL is paying Boeing a fee to remove the standard installed secondary barrier on the 787. The media has caught on to Mr. Smisek’s intent. What Mr. Smisek should be saying, if he followed his Mommy’s advice, is: “Safety is our number one concern here at United, unless it costs us money”.
Fellow pilots, we have made very clear to Mr. Smisek how stupid his idea of removing this barrier is. While OUR fellow crewmembers were being murdered on September 11, 2001, Continental management was watching it on the television. We take this very seriously and the flying public should know that it is the pilots who will ensure that safety is always our number one concern, not Mr. Smisek. This is our highest duty.
This issue is far from over.
Q3 Earnings Report:
UCH announced net income of $6M for the 3rd quarter. The net profit would have been $520M, but reduced by a charge of $514M related to the integration of CAL and UAL.
On the earnings call, Mr. Smisek said: “We are now running a reliable airline again. We realize some of our customers chose to fly other airlines in the summer, owing to the poor operational performance, but now we’re confident we can win back customers.” Mr. Smisek tries to brush this off as just on-time reliability issues, when in fact some of the reasons most of our valued customers fled to Delta, or even American in bankruptcy, were over Shares, PSS turnover, maintenance, and a general disgust in the way Mr. Smisek is managing the airline.
In previous updates we have criticized the BOD for being asleep at the switch for not holding Mr. Smisek accountable for the work the disgusting bonuses he has been awarded are supposed to represent. Remember the race to SOC? We told him it was rushed and failed. He would have nothing of it because the race was to his bonus of $14M once he met his own deadline of early November 2011.
The truth is that our most valued customers have fled because other management teams know how to run a real airline! Mr. Smisek has criticized other airline managers as “cowboys”. He claims that he is a “professional manager”. Well, we will take a cowboy like Delta CEO Richard Anderson any day. Delta is doing so well that they don’t even consider UAL competition.
Now Mr. Smisek wants employees to get “attitude training”. What he wants is to train our attitudes to become more subservient, like the Continental employees. News flash Mr. Smisek: Our attitude is directly correlated to the way you treat us. Until you change the way you treat us, we will NOT have a positive attitude toward you! We will care for our passengers and our profession. We will care for the aircraft we fly and for each other. We will NOT care one bit for you or management.
Perhaps it is you and your ilk that needs an attitude adjustment.
As the three of us depart for Phoenix, we wish to thank you for your continued support and resolve during the past eleven years. We have been promised an industry-leading contract that pilots will be happy with and make them proud. We are hopeful that we will receive a treat rather than a trick.
Happy Halloween!
Fraternally and in Unity,
SABRE MOU:
Management has finally agreed on an MOU with your union. This MOU is clear in not allowing management to implement SABRE flight plans until the product is complete, functional, safe, and to ALPA’s standards.
If you are scheduled to attend a SABRE class, you no longer require an order from the Chief Pilot to attend. We want to thank those strong unionists that held management to the same standard management holds us, by requesting an order from the Chief Pilot before attending the SABER class.
“I have a contract, and I intend to enforce it.” –Glenn Tilton
Attached are two documents: the original LOA for the 400/777 (FlyWize LOA) and the recent MOU for the 757/767 (SABRE MOU). The prior is referenced in the latter.
Tentative Agreement:
You recently received a letter from Master Chairman Heppner. As he describes, the TA is “nearing completion”. In anticipation of receiving the TA, on October 29th, the UAL MEC will convene in Phoenix, together with the CAL MEC.
There has been much speculation passed around recently. Those of you that have contacted us regarding rumors will recall that we do not engage in discussing rumors. Hopefully, we will have the document before both MECs, simultaneously, and receive a thorough briefing from the attorneys/negotiators, the JNC, subject matter experts, and MEC committees.
As many of you have pointed out (and as we wrote), the minute the TA is placed into our hands is the moment that the announcement of a TA should be made. Much of the consternation and confusion of the last THREE MONTHS is directly attributable to the announcement made on August 2nd. That lesson must be inscribed in this history.
In addition to the TA itself, there will be two additional documents for MEC consideration.
First is a Letter of Implementation. This document details how the new aspects of the JCBA will be implemented. In the past, management implements what is beneficial to them immediately following the signing of the contract, while pilots wait for months and years to have their improvements implemented. This document is not time based, but event based. This means that management does not get to implement something important to them until something important to us is implemented first.
Second is a Process Agreement regarding Retro Pay. Disputes, which arose after the negotiations of the issue, have made this agreement and the arbitration it describes necessary. Therefore, the issue will be heard in an expedited arbitration starting October 31st, with a decision by November 5th.
We have heard from many of you regarding the retro pay calculation. Rest assured that your council officers WILL NOT entertain any distribution model that resembles anything from our past. Our position on this issue has not changed since the last time we spoke of it in an update.
We anticipate being in joint session until November 6. Once the TA is fully briefed and MEC members conclude their Q & A, the two MECs will meet independently to decide whether to accept or reject the TA. If both MECs accept the TA, then it will be released to all 12,505 pilots for membership ratification. As we previously reported, we expect this to take approximately 30 days.
During this time period the Negotiating Committee and the MEC Officers will commence a roadshow tour at all domiciles. In addition to roadshows, there will be various media distributed and available to all pilots. You can expect a Council 12 meeting during this period, in addition to the roadshow meeting.
We encourage you to make every effort to attend a roadshow and inform yourself intimately with the TA before casting your vote. We encourage you to ask many questions at the roadshows to ensure that all of your concerns are addressed.
It will be most useful if all of us avail ourselves of every opportunity to learn about this contract prior to attending a roadshow. Better questions and greater insight will be the reward for doing the work.
Whether it’s called a Roadshow or a Town Hall Meeting, these meetings are for the transfer of information, and the receipt of opinion, your opinion. Should the TA be accepted by both MEC’s, the meeting objective becomes information distribution. There will be no selling of anything to anybody. This JCBA must sell itself on its own merits.
Do not expect any substantive updates on the TA while we are in session in PHX. The NMB Gag Order is in place until the TA is released to the pilots for ratification. An amendment to the order was granted to allow the MECs to be jointly briefed.
Since the August 2nd Master Chairman announcement of an Agreement in Principle on all major sections of the contract, we have asked you to be patient and allow the JNC the necessary time to re-write the contract in final language. This is not a modification of our current contract, like the Delta negotiation. We have been told that the full re-write is necessary to detail explicitly each section and it’s meaning, in an effort to mitigate differing interpretations by management. The intent of this effort is also to mitigate the need for filing grievances. The future will write that story.
Nine-hundred or so days later, we are almost there…
We will have an update for you by November 6th, 2012.
Secondary Barriers:
As has been reported in the media, Mr. Smisek has been criticized for saying one thing and doing another. Mr. Smisek says: Safety is our number one concern. What Mr. Smisek does is different. UAL is paying Boeing a fee to remove the standard installed secondary barrier on the 787. The media has caught on to Mr. Smisek’s intent. What Mr. Smisek should be saying, if he followed his Mommy’s advice, is: “Safety is our number one concern here at United, unless it costs us money”.
Fellow pilots, we have made very clear to Mr. Smisek how stupid his idea of removing this barrier is. While OUR fellow crewmembers were being murdered on September 11, 2001, Continental management was watching it on the television. We take this very seriously and the flying public should know that it is the pilots who will ensure that safety is always our number one concern, not Mr. Smisek. This is our highest duty.
This issue is far from over.
Q3 Earnings Report:
UCH announced net income of $6M for the 3rd quarter. The net profit would have been $520M, but reduced by a charge of $514M related to the integration of CAL and UAL.
On the earnings call, Mr. Smisek said: “We are now running a reliable airline again. We realize some of our customers chose to fly other airlines in the summer, owing to the poor operational performance, but now we’re confident we can win back customers.” Mr. Smisek tries to brush this off as just on-time reliability issues, when in fact some of the reasons most of our valued customers fled to Delta, or even American in bankruptcy, were over Shares, PSS turnover, maintenance, and a general disgust in the way Mr. Smisek is managing the airline.
In previous updates we have criticized the BOD for being asleep at the switch for not holding Mr. Smisek accountable for the work the disgusting bonuses he has been awarded are supposed to represent. Remember the race to SOC? We told him it was rushed and failed. He would have nothing of it because the race was to his bonus of $14M once he met his own deadline of early November 2011.
The truth is that our most valued customers have fled because other management teams know how to run a real airline! Mr. Smisek has criticized other airline managers as “cowboys”. He claims that he is a “professional manager”. Well, we will take a cowboy like Delta CEO Richard Anderson any day. Delta is doing so well that they don’t even consider UAL competition.
Now Mr. Smisek wants employees to get “attitude training”. What he wants is to train our attitudes to become more subservient, like the Continental employees. News flash Mr. Smisek: Our attitude is directly correlated to the way you treat us. Until you change the way you treat us, we will NOT have a positive attitude toward you! We will care for our passengers and our profession. We will care for the aircraft we fly and for each other. We will NOT care one bit for you or management.
Perhaps it is you and your ilk that needs an attitude adjustment.
As the three of us depart for Phoenix, we wish to thank you for your continued support and resolve during the past eleven years. We have been promised an industry-leading contract that pilots will be happy with and make them proud. We are hopeful that we will receive a treat rather than a trick.
Happy Halloween!
Fraternally and in Unity,
10-29-2012 | 08:36 PM
#7
Banned
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 690
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From: IAH 737 CA
Not sure why CAL employees were the only ones mentioned in the subservient statement. I must have missed the paragraph where the UAL employees bent over repeatedly for tilton. Strange how a pair of balls is suddenly grown overnight.
10-29-2012 | 10:56 PM
#8
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 2,025
Likes: 100
Moronic Non-Unifying post of the YEAR.........
10-30-2012 | 05:04 AM
#10
SLI best wishes!
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 399
Likes: 0
From: B767 Capt
There is a reason why management keeps singing the cultural change theme to the sUAL employees. They want a one big happy family, they think you are happy, why is that?
Now Mr. Smisek wants employees to get “attitude training”. What he wants is to train our attitudes to become more subservient, like the Continental employees. News flash Mr. Smisek: Our attitude is directly correlated to the way you treat us. Until you change the way you treat us, we will NOT have a positive attitude toward you! We will care for our passengers and our profession. We will care for the aircraft we fly and for each other. We will NOT care one bit for you or management.
Perhaps it is you and your ilk that needs an attitude adjustment.
Perhaps it is you and your ilk that needs an attitude adjustment.
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