My apologies to Snarge...

 

Apology not required. We are all dumb a s s douche MOFO's for even being here. And that is insulting a douche.

 

Absolutely not. The SSC just offers "their view" of the world and it is not contractually binding in anyway. Sort of like going to your local mechanic for an opinion of the wobble on the front wheel. You can take the advice or not. It's free and it comes with no obligations.

First, it's not the union's job to come up with the staffing and aircraft deployment model for the airline. I don't believe we have any contractual leverage here.

Second, the union doesn't want that job. If the union did that job it would be a lose-lose scenario. Even the company doesn't know what it's doing. Their best case plan is about 3 months out.

Third, It wouldn't surprise me to see the company displace 200 to 300 IAH B737 pilots and this time next year displace 100 to 200 Airbus pilots.

None of this makes any sense..... I think I have seen like 5 major revisions to the B76T and B756 fleet manuals since the merger. Say what? No one knows what they are doing and when they are doing it.

I actually don't care about staffing. We don't have any control over it. UAL pilots are treated like migrant avocado farmers and are expected to go "where the work is." Probably the same in other industries. Your factory gets closed, you gotta move.

I personally feel the airbus makes allot of sense in IAH due to its cargo door size and ability to carry freight. Maybe the airline can make some money.


Regarding the contract though: the union should pay attention to the reserve compliments in the various bases.

 

I was under the impression that everyone paid it back except ole shoe. I remember reading that in the MEC meeting minutes at some point.

Yes, I do believe that Lynch made out like a bandit. But, he wasn't named in the Fagone report.

 

I sleep very well at night. I actually faxed the definition out of websters dictionary of the word "unavailable" to a CP because it wasn't defined in our contract. I got out of my share of events, but I got tapped for more than my fair share. And, I know I blew over 60 hours of sick leave. The problem is this, if you are used to being off on the weekends and your trips end on Thursday or Friday, they are looking for guys to cover the weekend trips and you have a tendancy to get tapped. It took a while to figure out how to play the game, but I eventually got smart. The real problem is why wasn't the union shutting this crap down. No way should the company be allowed to do this with pilots on the street. No way should ALPA have not engaged on this and been prudent enough to not put pilots in the middle. I eventually refused a trip and said no, and eventually had to file a grievance which took 2 years to work out. So, thanks for the advice. You should have been the grievance chairman at the time. That would have been super.

 

Mark Leneski is in it for Mark Leneski. He sounds smart in person, but the reality is, he's not that bright.

 

In order to be a victim, you had to be victimized. I don't view it that way.

Look at what happened to Pan Am, TWA, and the various alphabet soup airlines from the 80's onward. Those pilots thought they all had dream jobs and it's just the luck of the draw.

You go to the prom with the one who asked you to the dance. It may work out or it may not work out, but at least you had a good time. 100 percent of my current beef with this operation lies with management. The operation is inefficient, top-heavy, and labor intensive (takes too many man hours to do the job) in many areas not related to flight ops. Makes us non-competitive. In turn, the company puts the screws to the pilots to be more efficient, so the airline can be more competitive.

Here's the deal. We're all here now. Our current problem is a disorganized rabble known as UAL senior management.

Allot of really amazing people got their lives turned upside down in the various bankruptcies and mergers in this industry, and I don't think we're done yet. Right now, we may think we won the lottery working here, but snap your fingers and it could all be gone tomorrow.

The real issue to get over from a LCAL perspective (for me personally) is the raw emotion of the journey. We actually had rampers paying money to give to Gordon Bethune to buy him a Harley Davidson Motorcycle. Any company that would allow their minimum wage employees to do this is "beyond" it all in my opinion. But, that's the kind of loyalty and dedication that the brainwashing resulted in. In the 90's it was allot of fun to be a part of the big turn-around at CAL. But everything we invested in is really gone now. It may sort of be like getting divorced. Don't have any experience with that, but that's really how I think it is. Lots of years, lots invested. But, it's all gone now.

From a union perspective: It was IACP, but then it was ALPA. Problem was, it was the same damn people. I don't understand why ALPA forgave the scabs, but when the scabs are running the MEC, and Fred Abbot is running the airline via the Pfrends of Pfred program it's a strange dynamic. Sort of like letting the lunitics run the insane asylum.

 

Baseball,

KEEP POSTING! There are Stepford pilots among us!

 

Why?

I thought it was ALPA's role to make sure we had the right assets from the ALPA tool box. What does Pierce and Brucia really have to do with it? If Pierce and Brucia had any sort of poor strategy or position, would not ALPA have stepped in to insure that the CAL pilots were treated in a fair manner? I really placed my trust in the ALPA process and not so much people. I asked these questions about mergers to the ALPA reps who came to our crew rooms to push for ALPA back in 1999 and in 2000.

I have it on high authority that ALPA paid Katz and had to be approved by ALPA national. The CAL MEC doesn't actually have a checkbook and they have no authority to hire anyone. ALPA National must appropriate all legal expenses, so I disagree with your opinion. If katz wasn't good enough, ALPA national should have made sure he was. That's why I pay dues. I pay my dues to ALPA national, not the CAL MEC.

 

It was termed "joint venture flying." there was an international dynamic to it, but the net effect would have been tremendous. Here's the deal. CAL took a look at the UAL book language after the bankruptcy and said, "we can one up them." The actual intent of the JV flying LOA was to increase flying at COEX, which has the net effect of lowering the cost of a pilot on domestic legs, and then couple that with some enhanced "code sharing" ala Aer Lingus style and you can see what that does to the effect of the price of a pilot on trans-atlantic routes.

The company was going to both lower the prices per ASM on domestic long haul routes and then simultaneously do it on international transatlantic routes. They were going to give all current pilots a 2 percent pay raise in exchange for relief on the absolute tightest scope language on the planet.

Per contract 02 CAL had over 6,000 pilots. Post contract '02 cal went down to 4400 due to the PBS implementation LOA. This is a fact. Then, 147 got furloughed. This was done to get the attention of the CAL MEC and to get them to the table.

Ask yourself these questions:

who authorized the CAL Negotating committee to discuss this or negotiate it? answer: no one. It was done in secret.

Ask this: why would the system staffing committee chairman Dave Zullo negoate this without anyones permission or authorization?

This was so weird on so many levels....... This was done this way because CAL knew the MEC would say no. This was done this way to bypass the MEC and allow the company to negotiate directly with the pilots. The company let it slip in a check airman meeting the details and decided to bypass the process once the MEC voted against it.

How many LOA's you ever seen whereby the MEC wasn't allowed to show it to the pilots or discuss it in an open meeting?

The real reason for the merger was likely the failure of CAL management to break the scope clause. The company was going to re-hire the 147 in exchange for a no furlough clause for the 147, but there would have never been any growth. JV flying to other "outsourced" carriers would have covered that. and so, there would have been no career progression. You'd be a 58 year old co pilot with First Officer menopause. by then you wouldn't have care if you got laid or got an upgrade. You'd have been happy to have a bowel movement and the occasional stiff erection.

The eventual net effect would have been this: we would have been negotiating against ourselves. Lowering the price of labor domestically and internationally. The next contract would have been status quo.