Hey Lear,
I'd like to hear your take on this. (First of all, glad to hear about the high voter turnout. We're moving in the right direction.)
I'm a little worried about what might be going on with Allegiant, PAR Capital, and the fact that we're adding a bunch of cities that seem to be out of character with AirTran. Did we piss off our management team enough that they've started the ball rolling on some massive whipsaw plan in the future? I was part of that big scheme at Mesaba when they threatened to shift flying to BigSky.
Absolutely nothing against the Allegiant guys. You've got a good product and a niche, I just don't want to see us played against each other.
Our management has seemed to outsmart us at every corner and I get the feeling they've got something up their sleeve.
You *SHOULD* be worried. You're exactly right, management has played union leadership and our legal team and outsmarted them at almost every turn. They have repeatedly been 2 steps ahead until lately, and I *DO* believe something's afoot with PAR and Allegiant on some level...
This is why ANY Section 1 needs to have HOLDING COMPANY SCOPE provisions, binding the holding company from purchasing another airline, changing the name to AirTran Vacation Express or something similar so that the brand recognition is there, our reservations people selling the product, and then shifting more and more of our 717's over to the new operations, furloughing our pilots, and saying "They're cheaper in crew costs, you'll have to match them to stop this erosion of your flying".
I believe that's VERY possible, and we'll probably know more in the next few months.
The downside is, even if they don't move fast with it, it'll scare a large portion of the pilot group with just the acquisition/merger/code share, and they are likely hoping that it will erode the larger push from the pilot group of late to a low enough level to where there's not enough people participating in union activities to make a difference. THAT is what we need to work the hardest on, increasing participation and hardening the resolve of our pilots, and we need to do it as quickly as possible.
If they move forward with it, we only have two real alternatives:
1. Cave to their demands.
2. Push for legal release to work action (CHaOS or even full-scale strike as a last resort) before they can fully transfer enough flying to support the business plan.
It'll be a race once they move forward with an outsourcing plan (and, of course, IF they move forward with an outsourcing plan). Can we get to release before they can shift enough planes to cover enough of our flying if we walked...
Don't count on the court systems to protect any kind of Scope provisions unless we write specific protections against these kinds of moves. There's already existing precedent from a judge ruling that "code share is not scope violation", you'd have to state that "code sharing IS a scope violation" in your CBA Section 1 to protect against this.
Our MEC is very aware of what the company is doing, ALPA's legal and negotiating staff are likely watching it very closely. It might be a shot across the bow to scare the pilot group, or it might be a move to undermine our negotiations and outright replace us IF we continue pushing for improvements. Either way, it doesn't change our strategy, just makes us speed up our push for self-help release if they move forward with even a "code share".
The game's afoot...
