Here's a stroll down memory lane reminding everyone Wye things went wrong when the west ignored its good Freund's advice.
There's Titanium level and then there's Titanic level.
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7/23/2008 … U-Turn
Taking Responsibility
“A recession is when you have to tighten your belt; depression is when you have no belt to tighten. When you've lost your trousers - you're in the airline business.” Sir Adam Thomson
Over the past few U-Turns, we’ve noticed a change in the tone of comments we’ve received. Maybe the reality of what we are up against is finally sinking in. Some accused us of taking the quotes from the Freund rebuttal out of context. We didn’t. We’ve had requests for copies of Jeff Freund’s actual East Vs West court documents. The file is too big to be directly cut and pasted. We can forward it in a scanned PDF-ZIP/Scan format. Just email us. Remember, we have no website, no budget and receive no donations. Maybe someone will paste it as an attachment on the AWAPPA web board for all to view. We would do it ourselves, but we’ve all been banned from the AWAPPA web board since May.
We have also received additional comments on what happened at Wye River from both sides. While our initial reporting appears to be correct and consistent with the latest accounts, it was incomplete. Here’s additional information from both sides.
According to our reports, on Day One of Wye River, Jeff Freund warned the West MEC that if USAPA won, the West risked losing everything. He urged reaching an agreement. He was gone on Day Two. We won’t address his motivation for leaving.
As Jeff Freund observed in his rebuttal to the East MEC lawsuit, the NIC was not in stone. And the loss of ALPA put it in real trouble. At least ALPA had the obligation, through the ALPA Merger Policy, to attempt to get the company to use the NIC Award.
ALPA’s lawyers knew the list was negotiable, but they never told either rank and file. We attended last summer’s ALPA road shows in PHX, starring Paul Rice and a cast of ALPA attorneys. Did ALPA ever hint that the NIC was negotiable? We believe it was for fear of fanning the flames and drawing more support for USAPA that Herndon kept that from us. They did tell all the Wye River attendees the reality. One side listened, the other didn’t.
In last summer’s East Vs West lawsuit, the East used ALPA DUES MONEY and an ALPA-Approved attorney, Roland Wilder, to pursue the case. As far as we can determine, we had to use our own Merger Fund money to defend ourselves. Thanks for choosing sides, ALPA! In the likely event that the NIC will be trashed in a single contract, it will be our own voluntary contributions that will have to be raised for a DFR lawsuit. USAPA expects it, so we shouldn’t disappoint them. This could be an extremely costly effort that could drag on for years. U-Turn is not discouraging filing a DFR, and we need closure.
Jeff Freund is a top-notch lawyer. We have no doubt that he told our MEC the truth about how negotiable the NIC really was. The question is: why didn’t CJ, Bendett, et al, listen? We figure that they either didn’t believe him or after all their hairy-chested resolutions and hotlines, they were afraid to back down. What good are attorneys if you don’t take their advice?
There is one other possibility. We mentioned it in a previous U-Turn. Our union leaders believed that the USAPA vote would be close (razor’s edge, to quote one of them) and that it was worth holding out and rolling the dice, figuring that if ALPA survived, so would the NIC. Too bad ALPA didn’t explain the importance of the 30% of East pilots who refused to participate in the Wilson Polling.
We now have a better picture what the East MEC had on the table: an 8 year fence, furloughs by longevity (LOS), MDA time not counting for longevity, Dave O’Dell having 400 pilots below him, and the Nic surviving as THE LIST. Yes, the East offered the NIC. They just wanted to protect their retirement attrition, which stalled by the change in Age-60. Looking back, that offer must look like a home run to any West pilot right now, but last February the EAST MEC and ALPA couldn’t get to first base with it.
Our former MEC and our union leadership played a very high stakes game of poker by not dealing at Wye River. Freund was right, we were risking everything…..and right now, it looks like we lost. They need to take responsibility for that.
U-Turn
