The smaller carriers are underfunded by design. That's how ALPA keeps the little guys barefoot and pregnant.
Riiiight! And just like your first unsatisfied girlfriend tried to tell you in her gentlest terms:
size matters.
Been away from it for a while but in 1999, ALPA's Spending Limit Formula (SLF) netted the Delta MEC @ $982 per pilot per year; Comair MEC had @ $170 per pilot per year to do the same job.
Correct! You
have been away from it for a while. (Actually, you've been spending money to
FIGHT "it" for a while, because you're a victim)
Apparently, the fact that the Delta MEC was funding an MEC operation that consisted of 5 times as many reps as Comair, with a Flight Pay Loss cost basis well above Comair's, is lost on you. 4th grade math tells us that it might cost 5 times as much to pay for an operation that's 5 times as large. This may shock you too...but I have it on good authority that Delta pilot's dues subsidized (and still do) Comair's operations. That's because Delta pilots (and UAL, NWA, FDX, CAL, etc pilots) pay more
into ALPA than they
receive in direct operating funding.
You know that. Why do you ignore it?
This is why the Comair pilots assessed themselves an additional 1.5% during bargaining. ALPA was threatening to cut off funding in the middle of negotiations (for the contract we just lost) because the Comair MEC was "overspending." In fact, ALPA published the public newsletter Heads Up during our Section 6 telegraphing to management that we were on the ropes financially within the association. Management must have smiled when they read that rag. Does that sound like "trade union" behavior to you?
The CMR MEC voted to assess their own pilots. I don't know why they chose to do that, and since our Association gives them the autonomous authority to do it...I don't care. Dick d. contributes to this Forum...perhaps he can weigh-in.
I
do know that the ComairMEC chose to fund an Executive Administrator, when MECs such as NWA chose not too. Perhaps that type of fiscal prioritization can have an impact on the bottom line?
$170 per pilot per year is woefully inadequate during normal operations let alone bargaining. The reality is that in a union where everyone is supposedly represented equally, Comair and other small carriers are routinely underfunded. ALPA's dirty little secret.
"
Secret"?
Get real! They receive
MORE than they
pay in...and that's unfair? Last year, Comair pilots received a large disbursement from the MCF to conduct
Family Awareness and
Strike Prep activities. They actually received
MORE, as a percentage of their pilot group's size, than the Delta pilots received last year from the MCF. My source is the
Strike Oversight Board rep, who handled both airlines, and signed-off on each airline's expenses.
The problem isn't just management.
Agree!
It's a whole array of forces that tend to undermine our strength, unity, and leverage:
- The government.
- The Railway Labor Act
- The courts
- Parochial knotheads (APAAD, etc)
- The
Cult of Victims (RJDC whiners)
