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USAPA members for an industry leading contract newsletter

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ualdriver

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 21, 2003
Posts
1,400
I took the Holly Hegeman part out because I think it is copyrighted material.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
USAPA Members for an Industry Leading Contract "UMILC"
E-Newletter Volume I, Issue 2

October 26, 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SWA Pilots get unexpected raise due to profit.

According to a recent SWAPA news release, the pilots of Southwest Airlines are due to receive a 2010 pay raise that was unexpected due to the position that the economy was unlikely to improve at the time the last SWAPA contract was negotiated:

"Originally valued during contract negotiations as a likely zero percent raise due to the economy and Company performance at the time, this wage increase arrives as a minor surprise and a sign of a changing economic climate." According to Capt. Carl Kuwitzky, SWAPA President: "This raise is good news for both our pilot group and Southwest Airlines. The pilots have been willing to tie our pay increases to the success of Southwest Airlines. Our pilots showed great leadership and confidence in our Company and we are excited about a future with an improving economy which allows our Company to maintain its profitability. The pilots, like all Southwest employees, hope that positive announcements such as the one from the Company today signals an end to difficult times and portends a bright, growth-filled future ahead."

With this recent 3% increase, another projected 2% increase for 2011, and another possible 3% increase in 2012, the SWA pilots (and thus the industry average wage) gets even further and further ahead over our LOA 93 wages.

Meanwhile, USAPA President Mike Cleary and the USAPA BPR have a formed a special committee designed to look for loopholes to screw the west pilots out of their share of profit sharing. While some of us might agree that the 2005 Transition Agreement unfairly "grants the pilots of US Airways and America West Airlines profit sharing", we think it is very short sighted of the BPR to even attempt such a folly.

Of course the BPR neglects the small fact that the company writes the checks and it is unlikely that the company, after having paid the pilots using the method agreed to by both ALPA MECs, would be stupid enough to agree to a new USAPA approved method that transfers all of the payments to the east pilots at the expense of the west pilots. To say the least, any pilot group would be incensed at such a ploy, and the resulting work action and bad press for the company and USAPA would be horrendous. The divide between the two groups would deepen and perhaps spark a jumpseat war or worse putting pilots at risk on both sides of the river.

In UMILC's opinion, such a move by the BPR would put the ability of USAPA to get a joint contract that compensates us fairly even further out of reach than it is today and thus would be a short-sighted move.

ALPA Elections; CAPA Elections; Goodbye Prater!

Well John Prater is a one term ALPA President.

Captain Prater, elected by the partial support of some of the US Airways and AWA MECs, was not even a close front runner in the recent ALPA elections. Instead, by an overwhelming margin, the reps elected Delta MEC Chairman Lee Moak as ALPA President. Moak's crowning achievement was of course to engineer a leading contract for the pilots of DAL and NWA (including a rich equity stake) BEFORE a seniority list was published.

In an interesting and perhaps familiar turn of events, the Continental MEC Chairman was up for First VP and was washed out by some political maneuvering by the United MEC and some of the CAL MEC's own members in favor of an Alaska pilot.

CAPA - the Coalition of Airline Pilot Associations had their own elections recently, and despite being a relative newcomer to CAPA, USAPA thought they could get a key position but Mr. Cleary and USAPA suffered their own defeat. Of course USAPA President Mike Cleary wasted no time in gathering up his marbles and declared in a recent hotline that USAPA might have to 'reconsider' its' membership in CAPA.

In UMILC's opinion, whether at ALPA, USAPA, CAPA or even at our local council level, cheap theatrical politics amongst pilot factions have little to do with getting a contract for our members. Get the job done for your members or go home and let someone else do the work.

Results of UMILC Pilot Poll

Below is a link to click on to see the results of the first UMILC poll. Two things arise from this poll of over 600 USAPA members (approximately 51% west and 49% east):

1) By an overwhelming majority, close to 90% of the pilots responding think USAPA is at least 2 years away from a contract, and

2) By an almost equal majority, over 80% of the pilots think USAPA President Mike Cleary has NOT been an effective leader. Put another way, President Cleary's approval rating is only 14%!

Keep in mind that although we had a large turnout, the poll is not scientific because it did not involve a random call center. That said, an average poll conducted by the Wilson Center under ALPA polled as little as 100 pilots at a time.

What do we take away from this?

Most pilots get that USAPA is nowhere close to a new contract and we will continue to fall further and further behind the rest of the pilots in the industry.

USAPA and Mike Cleary Survey

The Road Ahead

Recently, the USAPA Negotiating Committee ("NAC") produced a colorful, but rather lacking brochure on the obvious portrayal of management making hay while our pay sucks. Welcome to the airline industry. Clearly we are at the bottom of the industry and this fact is not lost on anyone.

Hey NAC - we all get it. We are getting screwed! We got it already! We see it live and in person everytime we look at our checking accounts on payday.

In his earning conference call with Wall Street, Mr. Parker was careful to outline the importance of his labor cost advantage. He makes record earnings and record bonuses while we squabble over profit sharing. SWA pilots get a 3% pay raise on top of the best pay in the industry, but we continue to be stuck while this mess plays out in court for years, whilst all the time the company executives are barely able to conceal their glee and love it while we continue to do stupid things to each other and remain divided.

The big question for Mr. Cleary and the NAC is: What are you doing to get us closer and not further away from a contract? From our perspective, we see nothing but harm being done and we are moving further and further apart and thus further from a contract.

[Holly Hegeman part removed here]

Well, we know many won't and don't agree with all of Holly's positions on some things here obviously, but she is dead-on about Lee Moak and ALPA's ability to course correct to make the Delta-NWA merger a success for pilots after watching our failures. The question is, will ALPA be able to do the same for UAL and CAL or will they follow our path to nowhere?

Lee Moak produced actual results for pilots and was promoted.

Conversely, John Prater failed to produce anything but rhetoric and was fired.

Are you paying attention Mike Cleary?

That's it for this edition. Thanks for reading and thanks to all those who participated in our survey.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This e-newsletter is distributed by USAPA Members for an Industry Leading Contract in accordance with Title I of the LMRDA:
TITLE I -- BILL OF RIGHTS OF MEMBERS OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS
Bill of Rights
(29 U.S.C. 411)
SEC. 101. (a)(1) EQUAL RIGHTS.-- Every member of a labor organization shall have equal rights and privileges within such organization to nominate candidates, to vote in elections or referendums of the labor organization, to attend membership meetings and to participate in the deliberations and voting upon the business of such meetings, subject to reasonable rules and regulations in such organization's constitution and bylaws.
(2) FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ASSEMBLY.-- Every member of any labor organization shall have the right to meet and assemble freely with other members; and to express any views, arguments, or opinions; and to express at meetings of the labor organization his views, upon candidates in an election of the labor organization or upon any business properly before the meeting, subject to the organization's established and reasonable rules pertaining to the conduct of meetings: Provided, That nothing herein shall be construed to impair the right of a labor organization to adopt and enforce reasonable rules as to the responsibility of every member toward the organization as an institution and to his refraining from conduct that would interfere with its performance of its legal or contractual obligations.
 
Here's the Planebusiness (Holly Hegeman) take. It'd be nice if she could spell 'Nicolau' correctly but otherwise good stuff. Bold added by me.

"This week the board of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the majority of airline pilots in the United States, named current Delta Air Lines MEC Chairman Lee Moak its new President.

We've seen ALPA go through a number of presidents over the years, with Continental Airlines Captain John Prater currently serving in the position.
Those of you who have been subscribers for the last few years know that I am not, nor have I been, a fan of Mr. Prater. For two main reasons.

One, the current bifurcated dysfunctional pilot situation at US Airways is a direct result of Prater refusing to enforce ALPA rules that were in place at the time the Nicolai seniority award was determined. Instead, ALPA blinked. Prater did not take control of the situation as he should have. He listened too closely to those pitching the US Airways East argument that the award was "unfair."

The upshot? He didn't do his job. The US Airways East pilot group eventually moved to decertify ALPA because it was not "happy" with the award.

An ALPA President with some you-know-whats would have told the group something along the lines of "tough cookies," reminded them that hey guys, the rules are the rules, and the situation would have been concluded with both sets of pilots working under the prescribed seniority agreement. And today both sets of pilots would be paying their dues to ALPA. I might add that the Nicolai award was developed using a formula that was, with a few minor tweaks, the same formula used to determine seniority in the Delta Air Lines/Northwest Airlines merger.

Nobody screamed and yelled and took their tinker toys off the table and went home red-faced after that agreement was reached. Both pilot groups accepted the seniority agreement and that was that.

By the time that merger rolled around, Prater and crew had learned the lesson. Or, as Prater told me at the Phoenix International Airline Symposium two years later when I asked him if there were things he would have done differently with the America West/US Airways deal, he responded, "Yeah, we could have done some things differently."

I guess so.

Today, the pilot group at US Airways is still fractured, there is still no new pilot contract, and the US Airways East pilot group is as delusional as ever. And ALPA is minus all those dues-paying former members -- from both America West and US Airways. That was no small chunk of change that was lost.

Then there was the matter of Prater's approach to how unions and management should interact and behave. To put it simply, he was a throwback. A voice that sounded, by the end of his tenure this year, tired and worn.

This past spring I challenged Prater as he participated in a panel discussion at this year's Phoenix International Airline Symposium. His comments earlier in the panel were what we had all come to expect from him. Nothing new. Nothing innovative. Just the same old tired union/management rhetoric. And then he said something about how all airline employees were entitled to job security.

As I wrote earlier this year, when it was time for questions I asked him why it was that all airline employees (and yes, he said airline employees, not pilots) were entitled to job security. As I pointed out to him, what gave them the right to job security? Do any of us have job security anymore?
He didn't like the question.

Well, I didn't care for the stale union/management emotional hot button rant. One can only listen to that same old song and dance for so long.
Meanwhile, the head of the Delta Air Lines ALPA MEC -- the person who was in large part responsible for bringing the Delta and Northwest pilot groups together before their merger while Prater was head of ALPA -- was Lee Moak.

I'm not going to get into a long description of why it is that I think Lee is the type of union leader this industry needs more of. You can read the entire Lounge Lizard interview we did with him earlier this year to give you a better background on the type of person he is and his view of the world -- in terms of unions and management philosophy.

But suffice to say that Lee sees the big picture. He understands the difficulty in trying to run a capital intensive company in a cyclical industry. He also understands that it is in no one's best interest for a union to stick it to a company when times are good. Because in this industry, times are going to be not-so-good almost as often as they are good. In addition, it usually doesn't take that long to swing from one state to another.

Having said that, he is no kiss-up to management. Critics of him will, of course, claim that is the case. It's not. He's one tough negotiator. But he negotiates, again, with a strong view of what the big picture is. What does the airline have to do in order to be able to compete successfully? Not "how much can I squeeze from management so that my pilot members will think I am a great guy?" With Lee, he could care less what you think of him. That is not the reason he does what he does. What he wants to do is change the playing field.

As head of Delta's ALPA MEC, he has followed a path that has him talking directly with management -- and often. In fact, I think it would be accurate to say that the Delta pilot union and the Delta management team look upon their relationship as more of a collaborative effort than a confrontational one. They are more like business partners, not adversaries.

And that is, I think, Lee's strongest attribute. He is going to seek to collaborate whenever possible. To look for shared goals and then look to see how both sides can reach those goals.

But at all times the key word is -- collaborate. Not alienate.

He gets it.

Oh, I know. There are a lot of pilots out there who don't like Lee Moak at all. That should not surprise anyone. You can very easily figure out why this would be the case.

It is that old way of thinking that is going to prove to be Lee's most daunting challenge. Earlier this year I asked him how he had managed to sway so many of Delta's pilots away from that old way of thinking. Boiled down, his answer was pretty simple.

Education.

He talked about how he looked at his job as one of education -- both in terms of the pilots and and in terms of management. He was the go-between. The one who continually sought to explain and educate.

No rants. No tired positioning.

But education.

What's not to like about that?

Not much"
 
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They want an industry leading newsletter about their contract?

Good for the SWA folks, they got a raise because as front line employees they worked hard and as the "face" of the airline made a profit. Over the last few years most airlines have lost millions and millions of dollars, but their CEO's all got huge bonuses...maybe it is time for something to be done?

But following the logic of the CEO bonuses and pay raises and the SWA raises, most airline pilots should all receive huge freaking raises, while SWA pilots** should get pay cuts?

**I am happy for them and I am only stating the logic

How is it that SWA a gleaming example of management-labor relationship has the happiest airline employees? And more importantly why do all the other airlines seem to think their model of poor relationships, deflating morale and beating down the labor is a winning model?
 
I might add that the Nicolai award was developed using a formula that was, with a few minor tweaks, the same formula used to determine seniority in the Delta Air Lines/Northwest Airlines merger.

Nobody screamed and yelled and took their tinker toys off the table and went home red-faced after that agreement was reached. Both pilot groups accepted the seniority agreement and that was that.

"

The addition of LOS language is hardly a minor tweak.
 
It's telling how from the two paragraphs you copied you only commented on the first. Hint: the second paragraph is the more important one.
 

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