Without SCOPE the hiring boom is a PIPE DREAM

[FBN0223]

If you're at Delta, get your card in for the DPA. With over 75% of our dues going to regional airline causes, it's obvious that DALPA can no longer effectively represent the Delta pilot group. With DALPA, more scope will be sacrificed. You can count on it.

 

[Bringupthebird]

HUH? With the combined influence of Delta and Northwest, you think ALPA is driven by regionals? ALPA is not short on problems, but any union leadership is only as good as the degree to which members keep them accountable.

 

[Flopgut]

Hey Floppy-
Age 65 change cost me personally over $85K and I still agree it was the right thing to do.

You need to have Mohamar Gadaffi proof read your posts for clarity and coherence.

I'm telling you the biggest problem in ALPA leadership is ethics. As an example I bring up the term scab and how the same behavior is interpreted two different ways by ALPA depending on how it affects leadership. I further explain that the recent change to retirement age smacks of less than ethical actions by the same leadership. This is what has to be fixed at ALPA if it's going to stay around. Ethics. Forget the intracasies or exact mechanics of the two issues for a moment and look at the behavior of the leadership. Let's not debate 65 again. Let's look at how the change was writtten. It was an attack on seniority. If it wasn't there would have been a meaningful way for those under 65 to have come back paired with some acknowledgment that a progression should have been preserved. Not done=lack of ethics. Don't allow ALPA leadership acting as though they have ethics, to replace actually being treated ethically by them! Do you not get that?!

Instead of trying to grasp the point, you blurt out like a 15 yo girl: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression you worked for CAL, a veritable Petri dish of S-types." What was your point in telling me that? This is not news to anybody and it doesn't diminish the point I'm trying to make. I've flown with scabs AND strikers. Sadly, at the point we've reached in ALPA today, you can almost trust the scabs more than you can the strikers.

Whether or not you know any of these types or not, this is basically who we've got running ALPA National. The guys who were junior when Lorenzo was wreaking havoc. Striker types who need to update their ethics and follow through at the National level in the same way as was done for them.

 

[Bringupthebird]

Trying to preserve Age 60 was indefensible. ALPA shouldn't have compromised it's relevance by demanding some unworkable construct like returning as an F/O as a backdoor way to oppose Age 65.

ALPA ethics? I don't think anyone should mistake conservative stewardship of diminishing influence as a lack of ethics. ALPA is trying to save what it can by doing what it must, but they are dealing with an industry that prices first and then figures the cost later, using bankruptcy to make up for any miscalculation. There may come a time and an issue over which dramatic action must be taken, but Age 65 was not it. Sorry if the show disappointed you.

But then again, why so much outrage over delayed upgrade from someone who chooses (or chose) to remain an F/O for whatever reason?

For anyone who likes massive rhetoric and stomping around while losing all credibility with both those you are bargaining with AND for, then give USAPA a call. They're the real men of genius you're looking for.

 

[Flopgut]

Trying to preserve Age 60 was indefensible. ALPA shouldn't have compromised it's relevance by demanding some unworkable construct like returning as an F/O as a backdoor way to oppose Age 65.

ALPA ethics? I don't think anyone should mistake conservative stewardship of diminishing influence as a lack of ethics. ALPA is trying to save what it can by doing what it must, but they are dealing with an industry that prices first and then figures the cost later, using bankruptcy to make up for any miscalculation. There may come a time and an issue over which dramatic action must be taken, but Age 65 was not it. Sorry if the show disappointed you.

But then again, why so much outrage over delayed upgrade from someone who chooses (or chose) to remain an F/O for whatever reason?

For anyone who likes massive rhetoric and stomping around while losing all credibility with both those you are bargaining with AND for, then give USAPA a call. They're the real men of genius you're looking for.

That's a good post. But I can't agree in principle.

What you characterize as "conservative stewardship of dimininshing influence" is what I have a problem with. If ALPA truly had diminishing influence, and the retirement age change was going to happen anyway (as our leader at the time claimed), then why get involved at all? Why not conserve our influence for another issue? (wouldn't that be more "conservative"?) You know, another issue that maybe 80% supported instead of 80% opposed? The answer is: our leader at the time wanted to advantage himself and a small minority of the membership. We could have just let the age change happen and just as many members would have been helped or hurt in aggregate. But National wanted to pick the winners. That's not the kind of ethics a union should have. It's not credible. It's really no different than what USAPA stands for. I don't know how you can make a distinction there.

The government allowed ALPA National to write the age change, and then we got put in time out. Nothing else has gotten done since and I don't know when we'll get past it. There were a lot of solid things the union should have been efforting that got left untouched by our former leader. However important changing the age was, I don't think it was worth the whole profession's entire future. Which might be the case....

BTW, there is no "outrage over delayed upgrade" on my part. I was a captain and I got displaced out of base and eventually my seat. Which was unpleasant but I'm past it. I have a better schedule and make more money on the widebody. Retirements will start soon and things will move pretty fast. As long as nobody pulls a seniority stunt.