There is plenty of blame to go around at Eagle for why they have the POS contract that they have.
It is a classic lesson in whip-sawing and the importance of unity and the danger of not having a single pilot group. Pilots are quick to point the fingers at pilots but don't try to find out what happened. We keep making the same mistakes over and over.
This happened right before I got to Eagle. This is what I gathered from private conversations with Eagle ALPA leadership as well as testimony from company officers and former negotiating committee members.
Eagle consisted of 7 (I think) different pilot groups. Negotiatons were going nowhere with management. Then management announced that the Eagle carriers would be getting RJs but which carriers and the quantity of RJ's would be determined by the contract that each of the carriers agreed to (there was to be one Eagle after the ratification, however, the contract needed to be ratified by each group seperately). Additionally, only groups that ratified the contract would be able to fly the RJ's. Meanwhile, AMR started overlapping the route networks of the Eagle carriers which up until then had all been geographically isolated for the most part. Remember that these were 7 different airlines with 7 different seniority list. They began to selectively expand certain airlines and contract other airlines depending on which negotiators were "being nice" at the table. For example, it got to the point where Wings West (LAX) was expanding it's new base at DFW while Metro (DFW) was contracting. There was a point where Metro was furloughing pilots that were senior to the pilots upgrading at Wings West. There was a large amount of distrust (still is till this day) between the pilot groups and yet, when the contract went out to vote the first time it got voted DOWN. Then, management put "the word out" that any group that did not acquise to the TA by a certain date would be simply hung out to dry (i.e. ASA/Skywest). The MEC and the negotiating comm. at that time only cared about the flow through agreement so agreed to put the TA up for a "2nd chance vote" at the same time so there was no waiting to see what the others would do. The 2nd vote was close, but the companies fear campaign coupled with the pilot groups inherent distrust of the "other" pilots cemented there fate.
ALPA national did not step up to counter AMR's fear campaign, nor did they do anything to stop AMR's tactics which many were clear violations of the RLA.
The MEC/Neg Com were mostly all very senior and only cared about the flow through. They would have agreed to a 100 year contract because they expected to be long gone within 2 years. All of the original MEC/Neg Com members flowed up to American except 2, one retired and one is still a CA in BOS (he was the junior member at the time) last I heard. During testimony at a grievance hearing a former committee member stated that they accepted a 16 year contract because "the company originally asked for 24 years, we were happy to get 16"...go figure.
AMR wrote the book on dirty tricks - and they used them all. The MEC had it's own agenda, and ALPA national only cared about trying to get AA into ALPA.
The rank-and-file didn't stand a chance.
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