Changing the name on the door will not fix anything, ask USAPA. Sure you can vote out AFA and vote in another union will not make one bit of difference, its your members and the leaders you elect that make the difference. The labor union umbrella you work under has nothing to do with it. If you elect officers that are ineffective, unprofessional, self-serving, and inexperienced then you get what you elect and what you pay for. If the members are not willing to stand behind those they elected, then you have a disorganized union, that's the last thing a labor union needs during negotiations. Most people when voting do not vote with common sense. They vote for a friend knowing full well they may not be the best person for the position, or they vote for the person they were told by someone, "oh I just worked with so and so and she was really nice". Please do your homework, read the information that the candidates put out, call them, interview them, look for the person that has knowledge, experience, drive and ambition, spark and fire. These people also have to have professionalism and creditability. Its fine to have a squeaky wheel screaming but if they don't know what they are talking about they are useless and ineffective.
I for one believe all of our elected officers in every base need to go. They have been sitting there collecting a full month (some bases that's 108 hours) for years and they have done nothing. They are all self-serving, can't or won't get out there and fly a trip. Unless its London (in CLT). You want a taste of our world, pick up an E-190 or 737 four day.
As far as the rotating reserve it will not work, all you want to do is put more people onto a bad system instead of trying to fix the system. Besides it will affect nearly 75% of each base, so once again it would only be protecting those at the top, the rest of us will pay the price. If I were based in PHL I would throw a fit, because I would fall into that seniority group that holds a primary from April to November and fall back to secondary in the winter, in fact I think last winter my class went on reserve for a month or two. From what I hear this winter will be even worse. If I can hold a line for 8 months out of the year, I am not going to vote to rotate myself onto reserve every 3 months or even xxx amount of days out of the month.
The problem is the industry is stagnant, no one is growing. The only thing that creates blocks/lines is flying time. If you don't have the block hours to create the lines then you don't have it. This is why you will see several hundred people going back on reserve specifically in PHL over the next 2 months. As I said if I were a PHL flight attendant I would be screaming at my AFA office because this is information that needs to be published to the members. Are they working on another VPLOA for January or the monthly LOA for January, anything to reduce the headcount? In CLT I lost my primary line for Oct., I usually do not lose the primary until January. Would of been nice for Miss Ann to publish the block hours vs our headcount so people could prepare because there will be people going back on reserve who were not expecting it. If you don't inform your members how can we make intelligent decisions that affect our lives? I'm sure some people especially those who commute would rather take a month LOA then have to sit in their base on reserve for 19 days. I feel very bad for those based in PHL because they are hit the hardest every year at this time. I don't know what the answer is to fix this but it's not a rotating reserve.