An open letter to USAPA Members

[Turtle21]

The cow pie is still a cow pie.

 

[Sluggo_63]

It was no "attack" as this is an anonymous web forumn so I have absolutely no idea of your gender so I took a 50/50 shot and if I'm wrong I apologize young man or whatever.

Apology accepted, grandma...

 

[charlie2]

Apology accepted, grandma...

Thanks grand daughter!!

 

[Metrojet]

Do you enjoy supporting the policies of USAPA which take money out of every pilot's pocket to continue the battle against your fellow US pilots in PHX? Even if the APA comes in and imposes new order as representitive, the bad blood will remain until the pilots on the east who value unity and comraderie with ALL their fellow pilots, take back control of the union from the slim minority who have co-opted it for their own benefit and say "enough". What better time than the first day of 2013?

It starts with formal demands of the BPR to present an uncontested seniority list to management and finish negotiations and allow the pilots to excercise their right to vote on a contract. There is no union worth 2% of a pilots pay whose sole mandate is to "stall until we get what we want". USAPA must earns its dues or be replaced.

Many have tried to separate themselves from their union's actions. "I just fly my trips" does not absolve them from taking responsibility for the destructive actions of those in power and it will be no consolation when crews are mixed with no reconciliation. The FAA wouldn't accept the excuse for an altitude bust of "it was on autopilot" and likewise, your fellow pilots in the west will not accept "yeah that USAPA..." in exchange for years of being denied a joint contract with pay and benefit increases.

Do not count on the generousity of the APA to heal the damage of USAPA. The BPR needs to hear loud and clear that the PILOTS will not support further division and will accept the consequences of doing what is right, regardless of whether a court compels them to or not. You can't ignore that a mixed crew future awaits and the only way it will be tolerable will be for the majority as a group to "be the bigger man" that the pilots as individuals perceive themselves to be and make healing and unity a priority.

It is not too late to begin reconciliation, but it must be done and that begins with setting the agenda of the BPR. I think everyone involved will be surprised at how well the long-awaited olive brance would be received.

Hey Bird -

Good play on words in title of your thread - ya got me interested - but I ask you - if "it is not to late to begin" - well, in any effort to settle - you have to put something out there to entice the other side to come to the table - where is the offer from your PHX reps to settle this?

Metrojet

 

[General Lee]

How do you settle something the East already lost in arbitration? If they don't accept it, they will eventually lose, and they are currently losing anyway in substandard pay. Accept the award, get more pay. Plain and simple. Don't accept binding arbitration if you won't eventually accept the award, which makes you a loser anyway.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[becket]

Hey Bird -

Good play on words in title of your thread - ya got me interested - but I ask you - if "it is not to late to begin" - well, in any effort to settle - you have to put something out there to entice the other side to come to the table - where is the offer from your PHX reps to settle this?

Metrojet

There's just one union. The West reps have exactly ZERO ability to offer ANY KIND of settlement. There is no mechanism to available. You guys thought you Were so clever stripping the West of their own representation....that's the problem when you listen to hysterically emotional idiots. You are where you deserve to be. Nowhere.

 

[PuffDriver]

That's a good explanation sluggo and points out how ludicrous the straight date of hire argument can be. Time in service does make more sense. Someone hired and furloughed ten years ago with a total of say 3 years active should not be senior to someone who has been flying actively for 5 years at an airline that hasn't furloughed. Even though the 5 year guy has a later DOH, he has better career expectations. Even worse in the USAPA deal, USAir east was in deep trouble when the west deal potentially saved their careers. Finally, right wrong or indifferent, since it was an obviously tough set of lists to merge, both parties rightfully agreed to binding arbitration. Never could understand how anyone could possibly think forming a union based on reneging on a promise and designed to pit one pilot against another could think it would ever accomplish anything positive.

I think it's a safe bet that the AMR deal, in whatever form, will have to accept the nic award to move forward.

DOH is not ludicrous. DOH is objective. It is a measure of the day you were hired. Anything else that you throw into the mix is subjective. If you want to tie somebody's career to the day they got hired via a seniority system, which is ludicrous, then in all fairness DOH SHOULD be the determining factor with regard to a merger. Fences, then can determine the subjective nature of what somebody's career expectations.

The one thing you can count on in all of this is that pilots will do everything in their power to get ahead, at the expense of anyone necessary. DAL/NWA did it. They have 747 rates equal to that of the 777. Similarly, the A330 is equivalent to that of a 767-400. Being as DAL pilots basically drove the merger, it is they who took this brilliant initiative in order to secure better spots in the seniority battle. Arguments were made that certain aircraft were going away, and a few did. Others survived, and they are still flying today. Europe has tanked, while the Orient has thrived. Yet the DAL pilots made out better than DOH in the seniority list, and guys will let it affect them for the rest of their lives. Had the award gone DOH, and fences resembling ANYTHING more than a handful of airplanes been erected, both pilot groups would then truly be experiencing their near to mid term career expectations.

Same with East/West. If you put a 4 month pilot above me in a seniority list, I will do everything in my power to prevent the implementation of that list. Never mind that you granted him immediate access to widebody flying which were outside of his career expectations, while his pilot group and the SWA pilot group were leading chargers of changing age 60. The East is rightfully pissed, and it is justified because they have done something about it which is very hard to do. They voted another union onto the property. To get that many pilots unified into one corner is akin to making mountains. Much has been said about suffering low pay rates to do it. That makes a very large assumption that better rates could have been negotiated in a very poor environment. Much like Comair pilots being absolutely sure that filing a PID would have magically transformed DAL management into combining the two groups and giving up an enormous cost advantage, the LOA 93 argument is a red herring. Nobody knows where they would be today. You are where you are, and any other opinion is just that-opinion.

The funny thing is that the AWA pilots are the big finger pointers at USAirs crappy rates. A cursory check of a few rates shows that USAir leads AWA in A330s, non-existent at AWA, and 757 aircraft. So that is one point, and another is that those are AWA regular rates, whereas the USAir rates are BK rates. AWA has never brought anything to the table in the form of compensation or retirement. They have been the anchor around the neck of unionized pilots since their inception.

Career Expectations are in the eye of the beholder, and it changes with the cancellation of a route, or an aircraft order, or a pay rate, or some other situation which has nothing to do with individual pilot choices. You want to criticize a pilot's choice of employer, then unsaddle that pilot from the burden of seniority and open up a true Pandora's Box of fairness. We are all just one bad CEO from bankruptcy. We can go from industry leading to bk in the snap of our fingers, just as crummy airline out in the desert, substantially propped up by the government, can buy a global operator and have a windfall list fall into their lap. I would cling to it like grim death as well.

It will now get even more interesting as AA joins the fray. The West side now has pilots on furlough, surprise surprise. Additionally, their flying consists of flying east into the former USAir system. You just gotta laugh at career expectations and where they end up. Where do you stick the junior AWA pilot relative to the AA pilots? He is senior to active East pilots, so you can't put him down with the furloughed AA pilots. At the same time, how do you place a furloughed AWA pilot ahead of active AA pilots, which will have to happen if the NIC award is used and you slot active USAir pilots in appropriately. History since the USAir/AWA merger has proven just how inaccurate the NIC award was with regard to career expectations, and I believe to some degree as well with NWA/DAL. AA will have better pay rates than USAirways pilots, yet they are in BK? Is the "you are in bk, so that is a strike against you" argument dead? Does the fact that USAPA can't convince anybody of anything mean that they deserve less consideration in a seniority arbitration hearing while being tied to a seniority system? Should being stupid punish you in a seniority based system arbitration? Should an arbitrator "punish" your career, a seniority, based career for clinging to traditional values? Why are arguments even being made at a seniority arbitration hearing? Both sides of the argument are going to to try and jade the mediator into their idea of fairness, and their idea of their career expectations.

Seniority list arbitration is a joke, and will become even more so as newer airlines such as Jblue and spirit get thrown into the mix, as well as nice operators like Hawaiian and Alaska. Guys will argue, fights will occur, and permanent division will pull yet another Jenga piece out from beneath the already shaky tower that is pilot unity.

And so it goes.

 

[TWA Dude]

- well, in any effort to settle - you have to put something out there to entice the other side to come to the table - where is the offer from your PHX reps to settle this?

Our offer is this: Nothing! (Inspired by Michael Corleone)
And you will drop your attempt to force your wet-dream list and immediately compensate every AWA pilot $500,000 for punitive and compensatory damages.

But more realistically, as has been stated many times we have nothing to offer and no mechanism by which to offer it. We only have one thing: a set of lawyers ready file for an injunction. USAPA is reckless enough to play that game again but Dug clearly isn't and my guess is the APA isn't either.

The West has the advantage of being legally, morally, and ethically in the right. You've managed to delay justice and harmed us a great deal. Your demand for negotiations now is cynical and hypocritical. Talk to our lawyers.

 

[charlie2]

DOH is not ludicrous. DOH is objective. It is a measure of the day you were hired. Anything else that you throw into the mix is subjective. If you want to tie somebody's career to the day they got hired via a seniority system, which is ludicrous, then in all fairness DOH SHOULD be the determining factor with regard to a merger. Fences, then can determine the subjective nature of what somebody's career expectations.

The one thing you can count on in all of this is that pilots will do everything in their power to get ahead, at the expense of anyone necessary. DAL/NWA did it. They have 747 rates equal to that of the 777. Similarly, the A330 is equivalent to that of a 767-400. Being as DAL pilots basically drove the merger, it is they who took this brilliant initiative in order to secure better spots in the seniority battle. Arguments were made that certain aircraft were going away, and a few did. Others survived, and they are still flying today. Europe has tanked, while the Orient has thrived. Yet the DAL pilots made out better than DOH in the seniority list, and guys will let it affect them for the rest of their lives. Had the award gone DOH, and fences resembling ANYTHING more than a handful of airplanes been erected, both pilot groups would then truly be experiencing their near to mid term career expectations.

Same with East/West. If you put a 4 month pilot above me in a seniority list, I will do everything in my power to prevent the implementation of that list. Never mind that you granted him immediate access to widebody flying which were outside of his career expectations, while his pilot group and the SWA pilot group were leading chargers of changing age 60. The East is rightfully pissed, and it is justified because they have done something about it which is very hard to do. They voted another union onto the property. To get that many pilots unified into one corner is akin to making mountains. Much has been said about suffering low pay rates to do it. That makes a very large assumption that better rates could have been negotiated in a very poor environment. Much like Comair pilots being absolutely sure that filing a PID would have magically transformed DAL management into combining the two groups and giving up an enormous cost advantage, the LOA 93 argument is a red herring. Nobody knows where they would be today. You are where you are, and any other opinion is just that-opinion.

The funny thing is that the AWA pilots are the big finger pointers at USAirs crappy rates. A cursory check of a few rates shows that USAir leads AWA in A330s, non-existent at AWA, and 757 aircraft. So that is one point, and another is that those are AWA regular rates, whereas the USAir rates are BK rates. AWA has never brought anything to the table in the form of compensation or retirement. They have been the anchor around the neck of unionized pilots since their inception.

Career Expectations are in the eye of the beholder, and it changes with the cancellation of a route, or an aircraft order, or a pay rate, or some other situation which has nothing to do with individual pilot choices. You want to criticize a pilot's choice of employer, then unsaddle that pilot from the burden of seniority and open up a true Pandora's Box of fairness. We are all just one bad CEO from bankruptcy. We can go from industry leading to bk in the snap of our fingers, just as crummy airline out in the desert, substantially propped up by the government, can buy a global operator and have a windfall list fall into their lap. I would cling to it like grim death as well.

It will now get even more interesting as AA joins the fray. The West side now has pilots on furlough, surprise surprise. Additionally, their flying consists of flying east into the former USAir system. You just gotta laugh at career expectations and where they end up. Where do you stick the junior AWA pilot relative to the AA pilots? He is senior to active East pilots, so you can't put him down with the furloughed AA pilots. At the same time, how do you place a furloughed AWA pilot ahead of active AA pilots, which will have to happen if the NIC award is used and you slot active USAir pilots in appropriately. History since the USAir/AWA merger has proven just how inaccurate the NIC award was with regard to career expectations, and I believe to some degree as well with NWA/DAL. AA will have better pay rates than USAirways pilots, yet they are in BK? Is the "you are in bk, so that is a strike against you" argument dead? Does the fact that USAPA can't convince anybody of anything mean that they deserve less consideration in a seniority arbitration hearing while being tied to a seniority system? Should being stupid punish you in a seniority based system arbitration? Should an arbitrator "punish" your career, a seniority, based career for clinging to traditional values? Why are arguments even being made at a seniority arbitration hearing? Both sides of the argument are going to to try and jade the mediator into their idea of fairness, and their idea of their career expectations.

Seniority list arbitration is a joke, and will become even more so as newer airlines such as Jblue and spirit get thrown into the mix, as well as nice operators like Hawaiian and Alaska. Guys will argue, fights will occur, and permanent division will pull yet another Jenga piece out from beneath the already shaky tower that is pilot unity.

And so it goes.

Very eloquently said. Career expectaions is the most stupid statement and should never be considered in a merger. When I was hired I was told TOLD by the Captain doing the interview that I would be a captain in three years. I'm going to start an airline called Skybus and hire 23 year old Captains and then Delta will buy us and the arbitrator will slot the senior captain into the the number two slot in seniority at Delta. Hey he had "career expectations". Or is it career entiltlements?

 

[charlie2]

Our offer is this: Nothing! (Inspired by Michael Corleone)
And you will drop your attempt to force your wet-dream list and immediately compensate every AWA pilot $500,000 for punitive and compensatory damages.

But more realistically, as has been stated many times we have nothing to offer and no mechanism by which to offer it. We only have one thing: a set of lawyers ready file for an injunction. USAPA is reckless enough to play that game again but Dug clearly isn't and my guess is the APA isn't either.

The West has the advantage of being legally, morally, and ethically in the right. You've managed to delay justice and harmed us a great deal. Your demand for negotiations now is cynical and hypocritical. Talk to our lawyers.

Damages? You don't seem to understand the Transition Agreement. I'll try to slpain it to you but I doubt you'll comprehend it. The arbitrated, binding, integrity, agreed to in advance, "award" to you will take effect after ratification of a contract. Are you tracking? You and or no judge or jury can take my rights afforded to me under the wonderful RLA. I'm voting NO. Take your nic award and kiss it. There are no damages and if your lawyers are telling there are I think you should pay them more!! Happy New Year! The nic has been so good to you hasn't it.