F9 Driver
Wear The Fox Hat
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2001
- Posts
- 515
Arbitrator Eischen's final SLI award is due in mid November.
I'm curious, what changes to daily life are the new RAH IBT leadership, the L3 UTU leadership and YX ALPA leadership telling their members to expect after this award is handed down and when do you expect them?
What I've overheard in the crew room is so far from reality that some serious management of expectations is required.
Settled RLA law defines the process after the award. Before any change to daily operation occurs: 1) One of the participating unions needs to petition the NMB to determine if the groups constitute a "single carrier" for purposes of representation. 2) IF the NMB rules that a single carrier exists the entire integrated group must decide on a single union to represent them. (If the NMB doesn't find that a single carrier exists - all bets are off and the lawyers get paid more to figure out what we do next.) 3) That single union must negotiate a TA with RAH management, and ratify with the entire membership, an amalgamated contract that includes a mechanism to implement the arbitrator's decision - and all of the other issues that have been open for the past few years.
Unless all of these steps are completed, the SLI award and resultant MSL mean diddly squat. Even if the process works like clockwork I doubt any change will be felt for a long time to come.
I post this because I am hearing more and more questions / statements about next steps and am afraid that there will be lots of misguided expectations, disappointment, and USAir / America West type sentiment come November.
I'm curious, what changes to daily life are the new RAH IBT leadership, the L3 UTU leadership and YX ALPA leadership telling their members to expect after this award is handed down and when do you expect them?
What I've overheard in the crew room is so far from reality that some serious management of expectations is required.
Settled RLA law defines the process after the award. Before any change to daily operation occurs: 1) One of the participating unions needs to petition the NMB to determine if the groups constitute a "single carrier" for purposes of representation. 2) IF the NMB rules that a single carrier exists the entire integrated group must decide on a single union to represent them. (If the NMB doesn't find that a single carrier exists - all bets are off and the lawyers get paid more to figure out what we do next.) 3) That single union must negotiate a TA with RAH management, and ratify with the entire membership, an amalgamated contract that includes a mechanism to implement the arbitrator's decision - and all of the other issues that have been open for the past few years.
Unless all of these steps are completed, the SLI award and resultant MSL mean diddly squat. Even if the process works like clockwork I doubt any change will be felt for a long time to come.
I post this because I am hearing more and more questions / statements about next steps and am afraid that there will be lots of misguided expectations, disappointment, and USAir / America West type sentiment come November.