Truth hurts doesn't it.....Transcripts don't lie.
Let's start with Dr Jacobs finally getting an answer to his question from Mr Pauley during his cross examination. He finally got an answer on his second try:
Q. I know it's a tough question to answer because you're
probably concerned that it might affect the outcome of the case
but I asked you a yes-or-no question.
Is there any possibility in your mind that the
sausage factory process of integrating the lists here, that the
end product that comes out through your committee and the BPR
that is then integrated with the APA pilots, is there any
possibility, yes or no, that it could be the Nicolau list?
A. No.
Q. Thank you.
The original question:
Q. Is there any possibility, realistic possibility in your
mind, that those plans could change and that the four East
Pilots and two West Pilots on the Merger Committee would
decide, you know, the fair thing to do is to use the Nicolau
list, recommend that to the Board of Pilot Representatives and
that board, with eight East Pilots and three West Pilots, would
vote to integrate seniority using the Nicolau list blending it
into the APA list? Is there any possibility that that could
happen?
Pauley's response:
A. I believe the way it will go is we will take the input
from all of the committees -- to me from the committee members
and we'll do our due diligence and go through various
proposals. The proposals will, again, give due weight to the
status and category of the pilots as they exist on our lists
today. Those components, statuses of Captain or First Officer,
and the categories of whether they fly a large wide-body
aircraft, a small wide-body aircraft, a narrow-body aircraft
and so forth. Those are the status and categories. So it
would give due weight to those positions as we blend the list
together.
And the other key component, as we talked about
before, is to maintain the principles of date of hire. One of
the key components in any type of seniority integration we'll
put forward will also include the length of service and give
due weight to that.
In the seniority integration that the result from the
Nicolau Award, it was exclusively a status and category list.
It gave no deference whether the pilot had one year of service
or 20 years of service. They were blended on a sheer ratio
from the status and category.
So to the extent we will give weight to the status
and category that exists in the Nicolau list, it would be a
blend. It would be a hybrid. Hopefully, it would be something
that we could all embrace and move forward and the
opportunities of flying more aircraft and more domiciles on a
global, that it would be the largest airline once it's
combined, the opportunities for all of us are grand. The
career for the younger pilots in this industry is wonderful.
And the career of the new-hire pilots and younger pilots
amongst US Airways is quite right.
So we believe, through this process, we can come up
with a hybrid methodology that our all of our members on the
committee, as I attested to, are very serious members and
serious about coming to a resolution on this. We can give due consideration to the things that Arbitrator Nicolau had given consideration to. But in addition to that, in conjunction with our charter, we do have to give due consideration to the
pilots' length of service as well.
