Well I believe the arbitrator has stated in previous decisions, something to the fact, Nobody has a crystal ball, so such/such company may have or may not have gone out of business. Fact of the matter is, both companies are here now and merging together. With that fact, take into account career progression, and even though I'm on furlough, progression at my carrier, had me making Capt. sooner than someone at the same relative seniority on the west side. True, at present day I'm on the street, but with the emerging retirements, whether it's as planned now, or pushed back 5 yrs. the end result is the same. A large vaccum on the east side sucking people up the list. As shown on the seniority progression chart, by 2014 the bottom guy at AWA was expected to be a block holding 757 f/o. Where as the bottom guy on the US list was expected to make capt 320. And at 2016 the West guy still wouldn't have been able to hold capt. In fact 2016, the individual about 200 numbers from the bottom, would just be at the point of possibly checking out, 2 years and 200 numbers above the West bottom guy.
So if you look beyond the immediate 1-2 years.....there's a huge windfall for the West side......as their movement up a combined list or relative seniority would be quite a bit quicker..
First of all we can agree that the ALPA merger policy states the one side should not recieve a windfall at the expense of the other.
Explain to me how a furloughed AAA pilot coming back to the Seniority list anywhere other than the bottom of the list (the best you could have hoped for without the merger is to have been recalled to "the bottom" during the last 5 days of operations prior to shutdown) is not a windfall at the expense of the Active pilots at the bottom.
Certainly everyone understands this !!!
Fast