I have to call BS on this one.
The Mesaba MEC chairman caved on the 'semi-strike' of 2004. I was at the XJ road shows.It was unbelievable. Hold the ALPA line but this is the best we can do.
You don't seem to understand how this works. The MEC Chairman isn't a dictator. He doesn't make decisions on his own. The MSA MEC decided the best course of action after examining all of the facts. It wasn't a decision made by solely by the MEC Chairman.
But in any case, I don't see how anyone can say that it was the wrong decision. Refusing to extend the strike deadline would have likely resulted in management digging in their heals and walking away from the bargaining table, because they would have had nothing to gain by trying to finish a deal that night. That would have meant days or possibly weeks on strike as everyone got mad and dug in their heels, and the amount of lost income from that amount of time on strike never would have been recovered at the bargaining table at a regional carrier. The MSA MEC made the right decision and ended up with a good contract.
I was unimpressed with Wychor.
Then your'e about the only one. There is a reason that when he left he was the longest running MEC Chairman in ALPA. He didn't keep getting re-elected for no reason. The guy knows how to manage an MEC.
The line pilots went out on a limb for a full out strike and the MEC sold them down the river for a less than average contract. They went to the wall for a poor contract. (Parts of the PCL 1999 contract was better)
Now this is just funny. The '99 PCL agreement was toilet paper compared to the '04 MSA agreement. Please identify the areas better in the PCL agreement, besides insurance co-pays. The MSA contract was pretty damned good. Was it a CMR contract? Of course not. At the time, MSA was flying all Saabs and a few Avros that were about to go away in short order. For a carrier of Mesaba's size and type of operations, that contract was impressive.
You need to re-evaluate Erickson....... Doesn't he guide the MEC? He refuses to acknowlege that when asked.
No, he doesn't "guide the MEC." He is the Chairman of the MEC, but the MEC dictates policy and sets the direction. The Chairman merely carries it out and runs the union day to day.
Scott, without a doubt. WG was recalled with good reason. You can't disregard MEC direction as an MEC Officer. You work for the MEC, and you do what they say. WG directly disobeyed the direction provided by the MEC.
In reality, WG is the entire reason that there was the dysfunction on the MEC that lead to a failed TA. He refused to even let the MEC know what our proposals were at the bargaining table. I was on the MEC for three years, and I never once found out what our bargaining positions were. Never once did I see what pay rates we had proposed. The first time I saw anything from the Scheduling section was after it was TA'd. He intentionally kept us in the dark, because he knew that the direction he was taking was not sufficient for the MEC. The end result was that the MEC was not happy with what had been done at the table, and you then had an MEC that wouldn't support the TA that had been reached. Had they been kept in the loop the entire time, from the beginning of negotiations, this wouldn't have been a problem, because they could have steered things back on track. Some of us tried to get rid of WG earlier, but we could never get the votes together. Too many MEC members just trusted him, even though he constantly kept them in the dark. In the end, those guys realized that we were right, and he had to go. Too bad it didn't happen sooner.
