Here we go again. They want to "scrap the award and start over". Here's to hoping they get send up spending a few hundred thousand and get nothing. ALPA, I'm not paying you my hard warned $$ to settle this lawsuit either.....

For the record, I am just as perturbed by the LUAL pilots who file lawsuits over these things. It's atrocious behavior.







HOUSTON, Feb. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Six former Continental Airlines pilots who now work for the merged United Airlines have filed a class-action lawsuit against their own union today based on claims their seniority was unfairly stripped when the two airlines merged in 2010.

The lawsuit accuses the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) of breaching its duty of fair representation to the former Continental pilots by stripping their seniority in favor of a larger group of pilots who worked for United before the merger. For pilots, seniority controls pay, rank, schedule, flight routes, types of aircraft flown, and job security in recession layoffs. The lawsuit says ALPA sacrificed member interests to pursue its controversial goal of achieving monopoly status as the only union available to every airline pilot in North America.

The former Continental pilots say ALPA favored the United pilots because there were more of them and because the United pilots had enough votes to switch to a different union if they didn't get their way. In 2005, ALPA lost many of its members when U.S. Airways and America West merged. In that merger, ALPA provided favorable seniority for America West pilots only to see the larger group of U.S. Airways pilots lead the switch to a new union.

"This union had been burned once before and, instead of seeking a fair resolution for all its members, it ignored its duty to be fair by repeatedly poisoning the process simply to favor the side with more political clout. This caused enormous loss to the former Continental pilots," says Adam Milasincic, an attorney in Houston's Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing, or AZA who is representing the former Continental pilots with firm partner Joseph Ahmad and Houston attorney Howard Dulmage of The Law Offices of Howard T. Dulmage, PLLC.

After the merger of Continental and United, ALPA sponsored arbitration to combine the airlines' pilot seniority lists. The lawsuit says ALPA skewed the arbitration's result in numerous ways, such as assisting the United pilots with discovery, and even paying a witness to appear for the United pilots.

The lawsuit cites the union's adoption of a seniority formula that favored the United pilots over their peers at Continental, including using factually incorrect information to further skew the seniority results, which caused the former Continental pilots to lose years – and in some cases decades – of seniority. As a result, the former Continental pilots are asking a federal judge to scrap the arbitration results and order ALPA to restart the process of combining the airlines' pilot seniority lists with no favoritism toward pilots who worked for United before the merger.

The lawsuit is Michael Carr; Gregory Kathan; Kelly L'Roy; Perry Meier; Charles Mulhall; and Scott Mund, on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated v. Air Line Pilots Association, International, No. 4:14-cv-00451, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The web site Home has been established to track the lawsuit's progress.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the FAQ's. Good to know that they will gladly allow you to send them money to help fight this life threatening virus!!

 

If the SLI wrecked your life to the point of naming yourself in a lawsuit, you probably don't have a life...

 

Some pilots certainly were stripped of their pre-merger seniority, and it wasn't LCAL pilots.

 

I hear in about 4 months USAPA will be looking for a new home. Just Sayin'

 

Perhaps these fine lads should be suing the guys who really screwed them over...JP and the rest of the LCAL merger committee. They failed to even address longevity in their SLI proposal, so it fell flat on its face.

 

Hey Michael Carr; Gregory Kathan; Kelly L'Roy; Perry Meier; Charles Mulhall; and Scott Mund, GET IN LINE be-atches. Maybe you'll get 5k in 5 years!! Meanwhile...Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing will be getting PAID!

 

This is why I encouraged my oldest daughter to get into aviation. She's studying to be an aviation attorney.

 

The process was followed.

The CAL guys made arguments that did not go along with the ALPA merger policy that one of their own (Brucia) helped create!

This one will be laughed out of the courtroom. Unfortunately, our dues will have to pay very expensive lawyers to defend this.

From 1996 forward, CAL guys were put in front of guys with more longevity from the UAL side. I personally know guys hired in 2005 on the CAL side that were put with 1998 hires on the UAL side. For some, that was like getting hired while still in high school! The CAL guys GAINED 7 years, but the lawsuit claims that they LOST decades!

Let's just make sure we remember their names.

 

It was flipped on the senior side, so I'm guessing these pilots are all senior LCAL. I had a senior LCAL pilot on my Jumpseat prior to the SLI telling me how DOH was the fair way to do the SLI. I simply suggested that the bottom 70% of the LCAL pilots wouldn't find that appetizing.

Seems to be a trend. On the LUAL side we had a senior group of pilots sue ALPA after the Ch11 bond distribution because the method that most favored them wasn't followed. Of course that methodology had the bottom half of the list getting NOTHING. I have no use for any of them. I hope the lawyers get SICKENINGLY rich.