DCflyer,
I can not believe that any f/a would sign such a document.
Your attorney is absolutely correct...if anyone signs this document, he may be able to go after those participants who signed such a retainer as it is a binding contract, even if its just one or two f/as.
Isn't anyone attempting to contact these f/as and steer them away from these types of contracts?
If this suit had any merit, the attorney should take the case on a contigency basis with an intitial deposit. A RED flag goes up when I see these types of documents.
Its sad to see that even on this board, there are f/as who definitely got involved in this.
It has "SUCKER" written all over it.
PitBull,
When the idea was initially tossed around, which was when the pilots were getting ready to file their suit, there was a wind tunnel of momentum. We were trying to block the sale of our aircraft and our routes to Republic. We were tired of mainline flying being outsourced and quite frankly we were tired of the Boeing/Airbus Division flight attendants turning a blind eye to what was happening. MidAtlantic was a promise made for a soft landing, and that so-called soft landing was being practically given away so that the post-merger golden parachutes could be funded. We tried, probably beyond hope, to educate the senior flight attendants that their flying is being outsourced. Hell, PitBull, we were flying 1,500+ mile flights, almost four hours. That's mainline flying and now, with the sale to Republic it was being outsourced. Nobody seemed to care what we were saying. Nobody seemed to care that once those flights are gone, they ain't comin' back. So the attempt was to do whatever we could to stop the sale The plan was to drop a lawsuit on the company in the hopes that they would realize we weren't going to take this lying down, that we will fight, and perhaps they would just drop the Republic deal. But the palace people don't care how many jobs are lost or how many houses are foreclosed or how many soup lines are lengthened; they cared only about their exit bonuses.
There were a few people who seemed to be motivated by money, but the vast majority of MAA flight attendants just wanted to take a stand and tell the company that enough is enough and if they were going to sell off our aircraft and routes, they would have a fight on their hands.
Well, the suit didn't get filed until well after most of the aircraft and the sim had gone over to Republic. The whole mosaic of the endeavor changed from halting the sale to extracting money. I said in the very beginning if even one aircraft goes to Republic, it's all over.
The MAA flight attendants were told by the steering committee chairperson and the committee, several times, that if they didn't sign and return the retainer agreement, they would not be named as plaintiffs. Well, lo and behold, dozens of people it seems, were unwittingly named to make it appear that there was much more participation than was actually the case. The chairperson had been going around telling people that their monthly payments are going down because the participation is growing. That seems now not to have happened. She was absolutely unrelenting in approaching people whereever and whenever, telling them lies, suggesting that the attorney would get involved over rejected unemployment claims... whatever she thought it took to get people to send money and sign retainers, she would say or do.
Five people have left the steering committee because of the chairperson. I had discussions with a couple of them, friends of mine who are honest, well-intentioned, intelligent people. The stories they gave of life on the steering committee were outrageous. They were trying to stop her from saying things that weren't true or making promises that she could not deliver. For instance, she got people to continue to send in money by giving them false hope that the payments would soon go down based on the chart in the retainer agreement. However, she counted in the numbers people who had only once given money before the Republic sale went through, when people had not yet been told there were going to be monthly payments. When these former committee members protested, she defended her actions by saying that people are short on money and need hope that the payments will go down. Well, they may be short on money, but giving them false hope is an outrage.
So there was an all-out battle on the committee because the chairperson wanted to write in a message to everybody that payments are going down. Again, three of the five members protested saying that if payments go down, there has to me a committee decision to do so. They refused to approve the message that she wanted to send out. So in the midst of the disagreement, she and her one allie at the time were cought red-handed trying to send out the unapproved message in an underhanded manner.
This led to those two members leaving the committee and writing a well-written, poised letter to the participants explaining in general terms why they withdrew. This was met with an e-mail to everyone from the leader of the pilots group (who those two departing members had tried for more than a week to contact in the hopes of helping resolve the conflict) basically saying that they were wrong and don't know what they are doing. The attorney even wrote a message to everyone saying that the two departing members were "naive" for thinking that the steering committee should be run in a democratic fashion. How the hell do you facilitate a steering committee if not democratically?
I knew right then and there that something was wrong with this whole thing. I knew that the chairperson was a disaster waiting to happen. Now that seems to be coming to light!
