Surplus,
You advise us to "get our facts straight", yet you take yours directly from the rjdc's spin page. If you want facts, I suggest that you read the actual lawsuit, and don't rely on what the rjdc wants people to believe.
The relief section asks for a permanent injunction preventing ALPA from "approving, or imposing those portions of the Scope Clause of the tentative agreement (now our PWA) that would impose restrictions on flying by Comair." Read that again closely. If a judge approves that request, then there is nothing that could prevent management from giving our 777's to comair. A wage war would start, and we as a "profession" would find ourselves flying widebodies for peanuts. As I have said before, there are people on your property who have paid $10,000 to fly a turboprop. What do you think they would pay for a 777. Don't believe this could happen? Look at what management is doing right now with DCI flying. Your failure to negotiate a meaningful scope clause for the 35% of Delta flying that you are allocated has resulted in a whipsaw situation that has had the president of DCI bragging that "whomever is cheaper gets the flying." If it's all the same to the rjdc, I'd just as soon not come to that party.
The lawsuit goes on to seek to enjoin ALPA from "negotiating, facilitating or advocating the use of scope clauses in collective bargaining agreements in such a manner as to excercise control over the flying of pilots for a carrier other than the one for which the collective bargaining agreement is being negotiated." Because we codeshare with skywest, Section 1.D.2(c) of our contract forbids them from flying anything over 70 seats. Can that be construed as "exercising control" over the skywest pilots. Of course. But every major airline has similar language in their contracts. If this lawsuit wins, than it is not a stretch to imagine 737's in mesa colors. They have threatened it already, but the U PWA forbids it. We thought we had a tough time competing with LUV's downward pressure on our pay scales (which have led to "b" scales like Delta Express, Shuttle by UAL and Metrojet)? Wait until mesa and tsa start flying similar size equipment. We'll be screwed.
The fact is, there is not a scope clause in the world that does not exercise some degree of "control" over another pilot group. It is a necessary evil in our fight to keep this profession one of which we can be proud. If you think that you can eliminate only the scope which you find distasteful and leave the others, than you have been misinformed. Management will use this case as a precendent to get courts to eliminate every scope clause. If you don't think that they will do this, than you have either not been in this industry very long, or you choosing to ignore the lessons of our past.
