US Pilots Labor Discussion

[Pi brat]

Contracts are not all about money. Work rules. Yes in some areas the west contract is better. The NAC is giving away the good parts of our contract. What is an improvement for you is inferior to us.

If you are sitting in the captain seat how is a west pilot going to take it away from you?????? Could it be you are an F/O holding up everything in a selfish attempt to gain something from the west?

Like what? I know most west want Pbs, what else because Id like to see the best of both and a lot of what I've seen, the west is better. Last time I talked to Paul he indicated that they were fighting some company attempts to offer lower than west on some things.

You're kidding about how I could lose my seat with nic and Phx closing right? Ever heard of a displacement bid?

I'm a captain. Why would I lie about that?

 

[767jetz]

This is for one particular poster, whose name is not worth mentioning. (You know who you are.)

More proof of your ignorance:

"April 18, 2011

Facts About Support for Recall of The Master Chairman
A recent communiqué by a local council representative said that four councils have indicated support for the recall of the Master Chairman. Council 34, Council 57 and Council 11, whose Vice Chairman has adamantly stated that a recent resolution by his council did not direct a recall, does not total four. The total number of pilots attending the three councils that did support my recall totals less than 100 of the more than 7,500 pilots we represent. Council 12 and Council 52 have resolutions of support.

The fact that I am compelled to take the time to respond to rumors, innuendo and falsehoods that have been circulated around the system lays bare a symptom of a major problem facing our union, a distraction that doesn't seem to want to go away. Instead of focusing our energies and attention on where they should be -- securing a JCBA for each of you -- some union leaders instead are focusing on gamesmanship and politics at the worst possible time. I took the time to write this message because I believe you deserve to know the facts.

Fraternally,


Captain Wendy Morse
Chairman, UAL-MEC"

 

[furlopro]

This is for one particular poster, whose name is not worth mentioning. (You know who you are.)

More proof of your ignorance:

"April 18, 2011

Facts About Support for Recall of The Master Chairman
A recent communiqué by a local council representative said that four councils have indicated support for the recall of the Master Chairman. Council 34, Council 57 and Council 11, whose Vice Chairman has adamantly stated that a recent resolution by his council did not direct a recall, does not total four. The total number of pilots attending the three councils that did support my recall totals less than 100 of the more than 7,500 pilots we represent. Council 12 and Council 52 have resolutions of support.

The fact that I am compelled to take the time to respond to rumors, innuendo and falsehoods that have been circulated around the system lays bare a symptom of a major problem facing our union, a distraction that doesn't seem to want to go away. Instead of focusing our energies and attention on where they should be -- securing a JCBA for each of you -- some union leaders instead are focusing on gamesmanship and politics at the worst possible time. I took the time to write this message because I believe you deserve to know the facts.

Fraternally,


Captain Wendy Morse
Chairman, UAL-MEC"

What a sad bunch of freaks you all are. Keep playing with you (computers) toys. You all all are like the weak pilot that becomes a check airman. Totally full of ####. WEIRD

 

[mrbreeze]

I just got home from flying for 7 days of Intl trips. Checking my mail, I received two full copies of my credit report, one from Experian and one from TransUnion, WHICH I DID NOT ORDER!!! Heads are gonna roll!

breeze

 

[CallawayGolf]

I just got home from flying for 7 days of Intl trips. Checking my mail, I received two full copies of my credit report, one from Experian and one from TransUnion, WHICH I DID NOT ORDER!!! Heads are gonna roll!

breeze

If you enrolled in Lifelock then these reports would have been ordered and sent to you as part of that service. At least that's what happened for me when I enrolled about five years ago.

 

[mrbreeze]

If you enrolled in Lifelock then these reports would have been ordered and sent to you as part of that service. At least that's what happened for me when I enrolled about five years ago.

OK, thx for the info. A little gun shy now, but will be keeping a close eye on things.

 

[MUTATIS MUTANDIS]

Contracts are not all about money. Work rules. Yes in some areas the west contract is better. The NAC is giving away the good parts of our contract. What is an improvement for you is inferior to us.

If you are sitting in the captain seat how is a west pilot going to take it away from you?????? Could it be you are an F/O holding up everything in a selfish attempt to gain something from the west?

Wow the extent of your knowledge and insight is so vast I am sure it reaches into places you can't see! MM!

 

[fodase]

VIA EMAIL AND CERTIFIED MAIL

April 19, 2011

Tracy Parrella
Grievance Committee
U.S. Airline Pilots Association
5821 Fairview Road, Suite 400
Charlotte, NC 28209

Dear Tracy:

You contacted the three of us last week, asking for our assistance with a West pay training arbitration scheduled for next month. For the reasons that follow, we believe that you are pursuing this grievance in a manner that is deliberately contrary to the best interests of the West pilots, and that will subject USAPA to legal liability. Therefore, we must decline to participate.

1. Arbitrating this dispute is a direct and deliberate contract violation.

As you are aware, the grievance provisions in the West contract are detailed and regimented, providing for an orderly and expeditious adjudication of all disputes. These provisions were designed to prevent an untenable grievance backlog, such as the backlog that you currently deal with under the East contract. The language in these provisions are explicit in that any dispute not resolved through one of the three hearing procedures is to be docketed for arbitration as each case becomes unresolved. The provision does not give the company or the union any discretion to table, backlog, or hold in abeyance any dispute. This requirement exists so that no grievance becomes part of a back room horse-trade at the expense of the pilot(s) harmed by a grievance, and such that no political agenda can ever hamper the grievance process.

USAPA has not pursued a single West arbitration in the 3 years it has served as our bargaining agent. There were some disputes already on the books when USAPA succeeded as our bargaining agent, and there are several others that have accrued since then. It is our belief that at least some of these egregious contract violations by the company were only effected because of its assurance, by your deliberate inaction, that these disputes would never be arbitrated.

The point is that there are several other cases that require resolution prior to this one, and you have not provided us a single reason why USAPA seeks to end its 3-year moratorium on West arbitrations with this case.

Once you notified us of the upcoming arbitration, we immediately raised these contract concerns, and repeatedly asked you the purpose of pursuing this case out of the required order. In response to numerous queries, you either offered us false information, or skillfully avoided answering the simple question altogether.

At first, you informed us that the company - not USAPA - was requiring that this arbitration take place. However, we contacted the company and they informed us that USAPA unilaterally controls the grievance docket. You did not rebut this fact when we communicated it to you.

Second, you informed us that PHX Chairman David Braid was at least partially responsible for negotiating an agreement with the company to arbitrate this case. A quick phone call to him revealed that this statement was also completely false. You did not rebut David’s claim.

Third, you informed us that the company had threatened to begin unilaterally withdrawing pay from West pilot paychecks if we did not adhere to the May arbitration date. The company averred that they made no such threat. You did not disagree.

Given these facts, it is not unreasonable for us to assume that there is in fact no legitimate union purpose for violating the contract by arbitrating this case ahead of potentially dozens of others that have been awaiting resolution for 3 or more years. We have offered to assist you with properly docketing all pending West grievances in compliance with our contract, however you have refused to accept our assistance. Worse yet, you have unilaterally announced that USAPA will not postpone this arbitration, and you have still refused to provide a single reason to justify this decision.

2. We do not believe that you plan to arbitrate this case in good faith.

Given the current state of adverse litigation between the PHX based pilots and USAPA, we believe that USAPA has a conflict of interest in resolving this dispute. Since USAPA’s inception as a bargaining agent, it has been engaged in a concerted effort to financially hamper our legal efforts, beginning with the malicious RICO lawsuit that was filed against the 3 of us and 21 of our fellow pilots. The company claims that it intends to recover $2.6 million from the West pilots; an amount of money that we are certain that USAPA would be thrilled to see us pay. We also believe that your refusal to arbitrate other West grievances is motivated, at least in part, by USAPA’s concerted effort to financially impede West legal efforts. As we hope your legal counsel has informed you, federal law not only expressly provides for our right to sue our union, but that same law expressly also prohibits the union from attempting to limit that right in any way.

Your actions of the past few days support our contention. Apparently, this arbitration has been on the schedule for approximately one year, however, the West principals were only made aware of that fact this week, and you have made no effort to resolve other pending West cases in the interm. In addition, the covert planning of this arbitration and the obvious enthusiasm you share with the company for maintaining this arbitration date is evidence of collusion. Further, you have selected a Board member for this case that has a well-documented history of personal hatred of West pilots, and has apparently been the subject of company discipline for some of his spiteful communications to other pilots. Lastly, you have refused to comply with any of our repeated requests for information pertaining to this dispute; a clear indication that you plan to severely limit our ability to assist you properly resolve it.

In addition to your recent actions, we are also aware of a well documented history of arbitrary and hostile acts by you against West pilots. These acts include:

· Refusing all offers of assistance by the former AWA ALPA Grievance Chairman
· Removing two experienced and trusted West volunteers from their ability to assist West pilots with disciplinary issues
· Suspending two of our elected representatives from participating in their representational duties
· Seeking sanctions against a former AWA ALPA negotiator for allegedly refusing to assist with an arbitration, despite the fact that he did not participate in the negotiation of the disputed contract section
· Refusing to file individual West pilot grievances, despite the clear requirement of Section 20 and Ninth Circuit precedent to do so
· Refusing to arbitrate a single West grievance for 3 years (and counting)
· Advocating for an out-of-seniority recall of pilots from furlough in express contradiction to the USAPA Constitution and to the detriment of furloughed West pilots
· Refusing to arbitrate a case on behalf of a terminated West pilot

This list is not exhaustive, and we intend to make use of the disciplinary hearing you initiated against Capt. Doug Dotter as an opportunity to make a full and detailed record of these issues and others.

Our offer still stands to assist the USAPA Grievance Committee with the proper enforcement of our contract. However, for the reasons we have stated, we will not subject ourselves to legal liability from participating in the training pay grievance that you unilaterally scheduled in May.

Sincerely,

/s/ /s/ /s/
John McIlvenna Russ Payne Mitch Vasin

CC: USAPA Grievance Committee
USAPA Officers
USAPA Board of Pilot Representatives
Laura Backus, USAPA Contract Administrator
PHX Domicile

 

[fodase]

fodase,

Can you not see how silly and irrelevant the clown stuff makes you? Once, okay, but when it's over and over again one comes to the conclusion that you can't come up with anything else.

If it's just therapy for you, then okay..............

Listen, if you guys can't look in the mirror and see that you are clowns, then it is my job to remind you what you are.

 

[fodase]

I just got home from flying for 7 days of Intl trips. Checking my mail, I received two full copies of my credit report, one from Experian and one from TransUnion, WHICH I DID NOT ORDER!!! Heads are gonna roll!

breeze

Silly Clown, yet typical usapa mental midget.

 

[Phoenix]

Listen, if you guys can't look in the mirror and see that you are clowns, then it is my job to remind you what you are.

C.S. stands for a lot of things... "Clown Spotter" of course is one of the most coveted titles.

Be careful... its a fine line between being a really enthusiastic "Clown Spotter" and a clown aficionado. Some clown aficionados are suspected of secretly harboring a clown fetish.

 

[luvn737s]

usapa is working on an inferior contract with or without the Nicolau. If PHX is shrunk how are those joke of C&R going to protect anyone in PHX when if we are forced out of here?

I guess in your world if PHX is shrunk our captains should be furloughed while your former furloughed guys should stay.

Unlike having 2 hubs in the same state, PHX and PHL/CLT offer complementary service. Using history as a guide the east is unable to sustain its high costs as a stand-alone entity and the west's viability is enhanced though access to east-coast markets and feed, so any economic event that causes PHX to close (shrinks 33%) would likely mean the end of US as an airline. I do think that when the fleet minimums are eliminated (USAPA doesn't have the leverage to keep something like that) there will be some shrinkage temporarily, but with less impact than USAPA's intransigence has caused.

So instead of basing all your decisions on wild, out-of left-field speculation and limit yourself to those events that are likely to occur, you begin to see that a Nic integration would lead to upgrade distributions very close to what you are currently seeing. But Cleary depends on the boogeyman because he can't provide real leadership without an artificial enemy for his faithful to villify.

BUT a combined contract does set the stage for a long upward climb of wages and benefits. They won't come back in 30-40% chunks plus retro like the radicals would like you to believe. It will come back steadily with each succeeding contract moving the chains further down the field.

I want to see the east as a group of mature level-headed professionals who make disciplined deliberate actions in their personal and professional lives, as I imagine they do in the cockpit. However, they have displayed a willingness to be lead down a dead-end road by an underperforming radical who plays on their emotions and exchanges the truth for a lie, just to secure his little kingdom.

Don't believe me, ask Cleary to defend his radical agenda without blaming the other side (a side he is morally obligated to defend, by the way). Ask him to prove that a union can make great strides in the abscence of unity.

If you are satisfied with his answers, then you are the caricature of your real selves that you appear to be. If you are not, you will find many who will join you in replacing USAPA with a union that can provide the gains and services that make dues a good value.

 

[MUTATIS MUTANDIS]

737, if history is your guide what happened to PSA? Shutting down or elimiating PHX would not be the end to the EAST, BTW your in a leisure market with little to no yield, http://www.foxbusiness.com/travel/2011/04/19/higher-airfares-start-cool-travel-demand/ RISK brother RISK!

 

[Eastisleast]

737, if history is your guide what happened to PSA? Shutting down or elimiating PHX would not be the end to the EAST, BTW your in a leisure market with little to no yield, http://www.foxbusiness.com/travel/2011/04/19/higher-airfares-start-cool-travel-demand/ RISK brother RISK!

Why does the thought of the PHX base closing provide you so much happiness?

Usapa and East pilots=Trolls........West pilots and AOL....duh "WINNING"

 

[mrbreeze]

Silly Clown, yet typical usapa mental midget.

I am trying to be honest and fair about this....I see no need for you to be an ass.