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.
I told you why and apparently, you weren't paying attention. ALPA was cutting us off.
Over an 18 month period between December 97 and May 99, the Comair MEC told the Executive Council that they were going to assess their pilots so Comair wouldn't be a burden on the association. They were counseled by National Officers individually and the Executive Council in session that the money needed for negotiations would not be a problem and a self assessment of Comair pilots may create the appearance that ALPA doesn’t support them. Then in May of 1999, during Comair bargaining, the MEC received a letter from the new Vice President of Finance stating that the Operating Contingency Fund (OCF) was dry and there would be no more grant money available after July 99.
Considering the scope proposals advanced by the Delta MEC for CY2K, is it a coincidence the OCF went belly up during our contract negotiations? Does the fact that the duty of fair representation lawsuit Duke/Spellacy, was being settled for an undisclosed amount (ALPA sold their crown jewel of real estate, 1625 Massachusetts Ave. two blocks from the capitol building in downtown Washington DC, shortly after the settlement) have anything to do with the depletion of the Operating Contingency Fund in 1999 or is it, as ALPA asserts in the short lived publication,
Heads Up, only the 20 deficit spending MEC’s that exhausted the OCF? Whatever, ALPA was pulling up the ladder.
The MEC had hoped that if there was an assessment at all, they could put it out to a pilot vote. A strike vote with dollars would tell management something about the pilots and tell the pilots something about themselves. After receiving the OCF letter in May, there wasn’t time for that. The Comair MEC had a total of $97,000 to get them through six months of negotiations and that just wasn’t enough. An assessment had to be imposed.
From the “Whatever it Takes”
package: “On May 18th, 1999, ALPA’s Executive Board passed a resolution (recommended by the Executive Council) requiring certain MEC’s including Comair, to obtain advance approval from the national Association for all Flight Pay Loss and directing further that we (some 20 airlines) operate within the Spending Limit Formula budget allocation. On May 25th, the ALPA Vice President Finance directed that we comply with three different procedures. It was made patently clear that unless we complied immediately, ALPA would impose an assessment on the “offending” MECs. On that same day (May 25), the Comair MEC Chairman called a special meeting of the MEC to address this issue.
Comair requested 795 hours of FPL for the months of June and July. ALPA approved 570 hours for June and 400 hours for July. We were told that after July,
no further FPL would be approved. When the MEC met, there were three available options: 1) shut down the union at CMR and discontinue negotiations: 2) accept a pending assessment directed by ALPA (this would allow ALPA to tax the assessment and keep 60% [FY98 taxes] of the money); 3) immediately authorize a Special MEC Assessment (this would allow the MEC to control the use of the Assessment income).”
The money problems we had leading up to the assessment are not unique within ALPA. The smaller carriers don’t earn enough income to generate the money necessary to support a viable local structure after ALPA's SLF taxes are paid. It's ALPA's dirty little secret.
