That's USAPA's problem. They wanted to have control over the union, but didn't want to represent all the pilots fairly. I guess somebody should have sat those kids down and explained how unions work.
If you wanted the west to wait 5 years, you should have rejected USAPA and let the west file it's DFR with ALPA national. Maybe we should have but national gave the nic to the company so how would the alpa awa guys have any chance on winning a dfr against alpa?
(Hint: ALPA would have combined both sides under trusteeship, signed the Joint CBA and thrown the combined pilot group back into the sea to duke it out.) Hint: We knew this. Duke it out? Don't get what your trying to say, if national did this then we would be working under the kirby crap that the west loves so much, with the nic list and many of us were afraid that was going to happen. We were watching national remove our reps who were voted in by the membership so why would they have stopped there? We really thought we had to get rid of the alpa national problem. Ask APA, SWAPA , Teamsters, ALPA guys if they think their union is perfect. Ours isn't either.
You do know that the difference in upgrade time for angry F/O's is less than 2 years between Nic and no Nic, right? Ask Cleary about that. Yep, two years, that's all some had left except that the age 65 thing changed that paradigm. Pilots will never willingly give up one day of seniority and you think two years is good with us? When you finally get your nic and I'm retired come knocking on my door to try and get some of my pension. Everyone knows you have my adress and social security number.