Lear,
What does this bit mean?
ALPA has a standing policy on mergers/acquisitions that, rather than having the MEC Status Reps and/or Chair and Vice-Chair micro-managing everything the Merger Committee is working on, they let the Merger Committee operate completely autonomous from the MEC.
That means the Merger Committee doesn't answer to anyone except the line pilots. They give regular reports to the MEC in closed session regarding details of what's going on, sticky issues, and overall plan of action, and the MEC gives their thoughts and inputs on the issues, but the MEC doesn't DIRECT the course of action to the Merger Committee.
In most cases in an ALPA structure, each committee chair is appointed by the MEC Chairman or the MEC Reps by majority vote, then the committee chair appoints his/her committee members. In this case, each committee member was selected by all of the MEC Status Reps by majority vote (most were unanimous), and once appointed, are *SUPPOSED* to be left alone by the MEC reps and officers, simply being told "Go out and get the best you can get for our pilots".
A change in status structure (4 new voting reps and a shift in roll call voting ability as well) that we are looking at *COULD* alter this approach, depending on who gets elected next month in MKE and MCO. However, so many people are happy with the majority of the Merger Committee members and so few people have any issue with what's being done by this committee that I don't see that approach changing. It's possible, but you'd get a large amount of lash-back from the pilots who are already jittery as it is if you go changing something that's perceived to be working, especially given our internal political squabbles that pop up from time to time.
So, in summary, the "hands-off" tack that the union leadership has with our Merger Committee is one that I support. Micromanaging from the top usually ends up with bad results, a la Muse. So we let the MC do their job and, when they come back to us and say "This is what we have, it's the best for our pilots and for the merged group afterwards, now vote on it", the MEC won't have the ability to withhold it from vote while trying to get a sweeter deal, we'll vote on it and, assuming it also passes SWA vote, we'll move on with merging two great companies with one great future.
Sorry so long-winded, hard not to when it's that much info...
