US Pilots Labor Discussion 6/10- STAY ON TOPIC AND OBSERVE THE RULES

[BoeingBoy]

guess we'll find out in three or four years, once the new contract is finally done.

That is one of the few facts I've seen posted in this whole discussion that's been going on for 3 years now (not necessarily the time frame but knowing the result). Only two others come to mind outside the actual rulings - the 9th panel dismissed the DFR case for ripeness and the SCOTUS says there is a 3 part test for DFR, and one of which is sufficient. Everyone is speculating, including me.

Jim

 

[nycbusdriver]

Allowing a straight DOH seniority list to be implemented in place of an arbitrated list would also set a precedent that create an end run around the McCaskill - Bond ammendment. I can't imagine the courts would allow that to happen and I would bet there would be a slew of amicus briefs filed as well.

That said, I don't think the company wants any part of a DOH list. Accepting that list puts them at the defendants table as well.

I guess we'll find out in three or four years, once the new contract is finally done.

Doubt anything in McCaskill-Bond could ever apply to this situation.

First, because two groups represented by the same union still get to use their own policies in mergers

Second, USAPA became the single bargaining agent several months before McCaskill-Bond became law. And you can't apply a new law retroactively.

 

[BoeingBoy]

Doubt anything in McCaskill-Bond could ever apply to this situation.

You miss the point. If indeed the East is correct, this case presents a blueprint for either triggering (if the same union represents both sides) or doing an end run around McCasill-Bond in the future for all airline mergers.

Take an ALPA-ALPA merger. If one side doesn't like the merger policy's arbitrated results all they have to do is vote in a new union and voila - McCaskill-Bond applies and the previous arbitration result disappears. If the other side doesn't like the results, they vote in a new union and the previous arbitration disappears.

Or if one side in a "different union" merger doesn't like the result of the arbitration, they vote in a new union and voila - the arbitration vanishes. If that side happens to be the majority, the new union would represent both sides and could do anything it wanted "within a wide range....". McCaskill-Bond becomes another piece of paper and nothing else.

See why all those friend of the court briefs we were promised for the District Court trial never showed up? Maybe because the unions that supported McCaskill-Bond didn't want to see if side-stepped so easily, perhaps?

Jim

 

[LSS]

You miss the point. If indeed the East is correct, this case presents a blueprint for either triggering (if the same union represents both sides) or doing an end run around McCasill-Bond in the future for all airline mergers.

Take an ALPA-ALPA merger. If one side doesn't like the merger policy's arbitrated results all they have to do is vote in a new union and voila - McCaskill-Bond applies and the previous arbitration result disappears. If the other side doesn't like the results, they vote in a new union and the previous arbitration disappears.

Or if one side in a "different union" merger doesn't like the result of the arbitration, they vote in a new union and voila - the arbitration vanishes. If that side happens to be the majority, the new union would represent both sides and could do anything it wanted "within a wide range....". McCaskill-Bond becomes another piece of paper and nothing else.

See why all those friend of the court briefs we were promised for the District Court trial never showed up? Maybe because the unions that supported McCaskill-Bond didn't want to see if side-stepped so easily, perhaps?

Jim

BB... you speak as if replacing a union on a property is no more difficult than changing your pants... It is not so easily achieved, but was way overdue on the US Airways property.

 

[Barrister]

That is one of the few facts I've seen posted in this whole discussion that's been going on for 3 years now (not necessarily the time frame but knowing the result). Only two others come to mind outside the actual rulings - the 9th panel dismissed the DFR case for ripeness and the SCOTUS says there is a 3 part test for DFR, and one of which is sufficient. Everyone is speculating, including me.

Jim


Sooooo now cynic writes a "fact" why is it not just an "opinion"
and what real "evidence" do you have that it is a "fact" other
than your "opinion" that it is a "fact" maybe it's not a "fact",
but that's just my "opinion"

YOU GETTING IT YET BB???????????

NICDOA
NPJB

 

[MUTATIS MUTANDIS]

When you retire in a couple of years and are still on LOA 93, I won't be one to laugh at you.

WHEN WAS THE LAST WEST BID? FLYING X% OF EAST FLYING ! MM! IF THE LOA 84 HITS YOUR RIGHT COULD BE MORE THAN 2 YEARS!

 

[luvthe9]

This is where you guys go off the reservation. It is not YOUR merger. there is always a second party involved. What makes you guys think that USAIR history does or even should play a role in any integration? Yours are not the only interests involved, and you treat everyone else like they owe you. (All this 'how dare anyone alter what we are used to!' garbage)

Well, when the Allegheny -Mohawk DOH merge is cited in the Nat'l Academy of Arbitrators Guidebook as a textbook way to merge, maybe it is our merger. It is history, and it is fair. It is you who have used some bastardization of it as the guiding way to do it. If it were so fair, it would have been fairly easy to implement. Kind of like those Sony Dream stations in the hotel rooms. Too complex to use.

 

[luvthe9]

Well, why don't you hold your breath waiting for another DOH list to be passed across the table. Unfortunately, it probably won't happen but if it does, we'll get to tango again in the desert court and this will be the grand finale! I wonder if we can get a jury verdict in under two hours in trial 2?

Oh, you might get another verdict in the desert if you dredge up another whack job like Wake, then get him/hr to violate legal procedure like happened last time. And then you guys will believe the fairy tale is coming true again. Remember, they passed a lot of Jim Crow in the south long ago. It just won't stick again. By the way, who caddied for Wake?

 

[luvthe9]

Aqua, you guys have got to be getting some pushback from the wives on funding another court battle that has no merit. How is the west legal braintrust convincing people to pony up even more??

 

[nycbusdriver]

You miss the point. If indeed the East is correct, this case presents a blueprint for either triggering (if the same union represents both sides) or doing an end run around McCasill-Bond in the future for all airline mergers.

Take an ALPA-ALPA merger. If one side doesn't like the merger policy's arbitrated results all they have to do is vote in a new union and voila - McCaskill-Bond applies and the previous arbitration result disappears. If the other side doesn't like the results, they vote in a new union and the previous arbitration disappears.

Or if one side in a "different union" merger doesn't like the result of the arbitration, they vote in a new union and voila - the arbitration vanishes. If that side happens to be the majority, the new union would represent both sides and could do anything it wanted "within a wide range....". McCaskill-Bond becomes another piece of paper and nothing else.

See why all those friend of the court briefs we were promised for the District Court trial never showed up? Maybe because the unions that supported McCaskill-Bond didn't want to see if side-stepped so easily, perhaps?

Jim

I see what you're saying. However, McCaskill-Bond now adds a federal imprimatur and legal gravity to what was previously an internal union process. I don't think anything that was done here by the pilots of USAirways would apply to a post-McCaskill-Bond era any more than the Lorenzo-style tactics of contract-trashing at Continental would work today due to the laws being changed post the Continental bankruptcy of the early 1980s.

 

[usabusdriver]

...
In any way you look at this, USAPA just came through the process with the ability to abandon the NIC, as longs as it acts in Good Faith for all of its members.

ROACLT,

One has to read without confirmation bias to get a comprehensive view. While what you state as your opinion is as valid as any other's, it is not exclusive. I have a relative whom is a circuit judge who has advised me that legal writing, as well as reading, is a fine art and those who practice it at the highest level craft their language carefully.

With that in mind let us review the language you have been discussing. See the footnote in its entirety below:

3We do not address the thorny question of the extent to which the Nicolau Award is binding on USAPA. We note, as the district court recog-nized, that USAPA is at least as free to abandon the Nicolau Award as was its predecessor, ALPA. The dissent appears implicitly to assume that the Nicolau Award, the product of the internal rules and processes of ALPA, is binding on USAPA. See Diss op. at 8021-22.

We must not fall into the trap of viewing “judicial phrases severed from their environment”. “USAPA is at least as free to abandon the Nicolau as was it’s predecessor, ALPA.” is the phrase that has drawn much attention.

Let us examine the footnote starting from the beginning. They describe the question of binding as “thorny”, why is that? It may be because the contractual process delineated in the Transition Agreement and case law, suggests that it is, but not definitively. Next, they note about freedom to abandon the Nic with the modifier “as the district court recognized”. The district court opined about the Nic as well as “good faith” in regards to the union’s obligations of the DFR. See excerpts below (taken out of context of the whole of course)

The award, according to USAPA, was imposed on the East Pilots without their consent; ALPA, and by extension USAPA, remained free to order its affairs as though the award had never happened. This argument offends common sense, the evidence, and fundamental principles of law. In the context of labor rights, it is both discordant and irrelevant.

=====================

Even when an internal union arbitration resolves a seniority dispute, it is not necessarily improper for a union to pursue an alternative outcome. Associated Transport, Inc., 185 NLRB 631, 635 (1970) (unfair labor practice case). USAPA clings to these generalities, but they give no protection here. The question is not whether USAPA made a seniority proposal that is acceptable in the abstract, or whether USAPA deprived certain employees of their property rights, or what position it could have taken before agreement to a different final and binding process. The question is not whether USAPA has the right to adjust its bargaining position, even after playing out an agreed final and binding process, for some good reason. The legal question is whether USAPA—or any union—violates its duty of fair representation by adopting and promoting a certain integrated seniority list for no reason other than to favor one group of employees at the expense of another. An established genre of fair representation decisions says yes.

======================

The Airline has accepted the Nicolau Award, expressing no opposition to it, and the union has failed to show any legitimate reason (or plausible future reason) for abandoning it. Liability flows from the process and aims of USAPA’s seniority position.

Finally they reference that the dissenting opinion implicitly assumes the Nic is binding on the union.

The conclusion is that the freedom to negotiate, as expressed, may not be as free as you state. You conclude the Nic is not binding, that good faith goes hand in hand with “a wide range of reasonableness” that is not wholly “irrational” or “arbitrary” and that abandoning the Nic and adopting DOH meets those criteria.

I believe that the ninth circuit’s opinion was mainly limited to ripeness, and that several issues that the district court proceedings brought forth, which were not addressed in the ninth’s opinion, will be important as this process moves forward. Good faith is equal to “honesty of purpose”, “USAPA’s sole objective in adopting and presenting its seniority proposal to the Airline was to benefit East Pilots at the expense of West Pilots, rather than to benefit the bargaining union as a whole.”, and “legitimate union objective”. These issues were not addressed by the ninth circuit and are instrumental in determining the union’s ability to freely negotiate an integrated seniority list without liability of DFR. Please reread the dissenting opinion again. It reinforces the notion that this whole seniority food fight involves complex arguments that have yet to be settled.

Again, just my opinion.

 

[nic4us]

OK, a few questions:

How free was ALPA to abandon the Nic award? Could they just toss it aside or did they need concurrence from both sides to alter it?

I also have never really heard an honest realistic answer from an East Pilot to rectify the following:

Just prior to a merger, what position did a 16 or 17 year East pilot hold? Was he on reserve or a block holder?......................... If further downsizing happened (absent the merger, say in another economic downturn), where would that same pilot be?

Now, where would that same pilot be today with the Nic Award post merger? Compare that for me, to where he'd be today with DOH with C&R's?

I'd really like an honest and thoughtful answer. Whenever these questions were posed in the past I only got the standard "I'm not having some young new hire ahead of me" response. Or I was answered with more questions, rhetoric, and attacks. I'd really like to know the unemotional answers to these questions to challenge my own point of reference to this whole situation. And if you or anyone else decides to give me some rational answers, please, for the sake of conversation, leave out union politics, anyone's age or slants on fairness. I'm only interested in the facts.

Jetz,

I am glad you asked. You will not get an answere from any east posters, because their wholesale attempt of stealing West seniority is absolutely indefensible.

First, ALPA was not free to abandon the award, Prater told the east as much when they stormed Herndon, and again later as he catered to their temper tantrum.

Second, prior to the merger, the status a 16 year east pilot held was furloughed, and some pretty deep into the furloughed ranks. A 17 year pilot was either furloughed or at the very bottom of the east list.

Third, to compare, pre-merger, with Nic and then usapa's DOH proposal. The West pilot who was pre-merger #750/1884 (a line holding 320 captain) has a Nic number of 2124, and usapa number of 4267. All former active east pilots are moved well above him, plus hundreds of furloughed east pilots are above him. Some of which have as much as 6 years less LOS, because of all the time they spent furloughed. The only active pilots below him are the same 1100 former West pilots he had below him pre-merger, and it gets worse. Move 300 numbers junior to him and you have former West captains who would be furloughed in a 10% reduction, while former east furloughees with much less LOS would remain employed.

At best, usapa might get some of the top 300 former West pilots (who are nearing retirement) to go along with their DOH list, if it guarantees no east movement into the original 142 aircraft AWA brought to the merger (i.e. status protection, not domicile protection). But the other 1500 who get stapled under their furloughees, well, lets just say,,,,,,,

pass anything other than the Nic, get sued, waste money, lose "unquestionably ripe" DFR.

 

[767jetz]

BB... you speak as if replacing a union on a property is no more difficult than changing your pants... It is not so easily achieved, but was way overdue on the US Airways property.

Actually it is pretty easy. If the precedent is set as BB speculates, then all one side needs is a majority and a group unhappy enough with the results. Then, BINGO... new union and the majority gets what they want. How convenient! only thing is, there are a plenty of people outside of USAPA and ALPA who see the through this end run strategy.

 

[nic4us]

Oh, you might get another verdict in the desert if you dredge up another whack job like Wake, then get him/hr to violate legal procedure like happened last time. And then you guys will believe the fairy tale is coming true again. Remember, they passed a lot of Jim Crow in the south long ago. It just won't stick again. By the way, who caddied for Wake?

I would also like to point out to the lurkers here that the west has still refrained from calling Judges Graber and Tashima derogatory names, or accused them of having some illegal conflict of interest reason for their opinion that is contrary to beliefs held by the West, Judges Wake and Bybee, arbitrator Nicolau, the company, ALPA, Senators McCaskill and Bond, the National College of Arbitrators, the American Arbitration Association, the Supreme Court of the United States, and most importantly a jury of 9 of our peers.

Make no mistake usapa,

Pass anything other than the Nic, get sued, waste money, lose "unquestionably ripe" DFR.

 

[767jetz]

Why has AFA had no problems over and through ALL of these mergers?

(I'll answer for you)

"...duh, they're not ALPA..."

AFA=DOH

Wrong. The answer is because a flight attendant job does not turn so drastically on a seniority number. Neither does any other employee group. Pilot's quality of life, fleet, seat, and pay drastically change depending on their relative position. That's why a guy sitting bottom reserve and a few numbers from furlough should never be placed above another pilot who is a captain and or line holder and n where near furlough.