Pilot, assuming arguendo that your theory is valid, dosen't it still come back to the individual MEC's (especially East) who:
1. Voted to adopt the ALPA merger guidelines;
2. Failed to change any flawed guidelines;
3. Voted in Woerth and Prater; and,
4 Negotiated a merger integration that ultimately relied on ALPA's merger policy and arbitration policy to attempt to resolve any unresolved issues.
We keep coming back to the discussion that many East pilots have said they had long standing issues with ALPA that pre-date the merger, yet nothing seemingly caused enough of an issue for East to even attempt to oust ALPA until after Nicolau. I just can't get past my theory that had Nicolau ruled in favor of East that none of the current turmoil, from the East folks, would be occurring because, in large part, ALPA would then be defending your position in the current situation. After all, ALPA National is nothing more then a centralized association of many smaller local associations and all of it's "power" results from the local associations?