2015 Pilot Discussion.

[cactusboy53]

Dave remember that came from your pilot group U-turn Mr. Nice Guy, they tell me you are to blame for the loss, is that true?
Big smiles Dave!

Well, since I don't recognize Uturn as anything more than drivel, AND since the author had NOTHING to do with Wye River it seems to me that you are grasping at straws. Further, I do know several people that were there, and your account is (as reported by Uturn, per YOUR report) is FALSE. A FABRICATION. A LIE. I guess that still makes you a LIAR.

 

[cactusboy53]

It's true.  Dave ain't exactly your brightest bulb.  He listened to Greaseball Ferguson and Mitch Vaselino" line of self serving bull**it.  He found them to be highly credibleso he supported walking out of Wye River.  Brilliant move.

Enjoy your 84 day delay. I'm sure while you're assembling your new "Supremely Confident USAPA M/C", Judges Conrad & Silver will see you for the fine people that you are.

Instead of quoting U-turd, you might spend some time reading the 9th's decision....

Oh never mind. I forgot you are incapable of understanding the truth.

 

[snapthis]

Enjoy your 84 day delay. I'm sure while you're assembling your new "Supremely Confident USAPA M/C", Judges Conrad & Silver will see you for the fine people that you are.
Instead of quoting U-turd, you might spend some time reading the 9th's decision....
Oh never mind. I forgot you are incapable of understanding the truth.

The 9th's decision is a good read. It shows the entitlement and greed of Usapians.

The beginning:

ADDINGTON V. USAPA
The East Pilots were a substantially larger group, consisting of about 5,100 pilots, as
compared with 1,900 West Pilots. America West, however,
was a newer and financially stronger airline; although its
pilots generally had a later hire date, they also enjoyed better
wages and greater job security. Most significantly, some
1,700 East Pilots (about one-third of all East Pilots) were on
furlough at the time of the merger, while no West Pilots were
on furlough. The negotiations, including mediation, failed to
generate consensus over a single list, so pursuant to ALPA’s
Merger Policy, the parties proceeded to binding arbitration.
 
2. The Nicolau Arbitration
The Nicolau Award placed about 500 senior East Pilots at the top
of the seniority list, explaining that the West Pilots were not
operating the widebody international aircraft generally flown
by the most senior East Pilots at the time of the merger. It
also placed at the bottom of the list the 1,700 East Pilots who
were furloughed at the time of the merger, explaining that
“merging active pilots with furloughees, despite the length of
service of some of the latter, is not at all fair or equitable
under any of the stated criteria.” The Nicolau Award blended
the remainder of the East Pilot list with the West Pilot list.
 
3. Decertification of ALPA/Certification of USAPA
As the district court aptly observed, “[t]o say the East
Pilots were not pleased [with the Nicolau Award] is an
understatement.” As we described in Addington I, a majority
of the East Pilots “strenuously objected” to the Nicolau
Award and immediately set about finding ways to prevent its
implementation. 606 F.3d at 1177–78. Initially, the East
Pilots tried to convince ALPA to find a way to set aside the
Award. When that failed, the East Pilots filed suit to set aside
the Nicolau Award. ALPA continued to urge the East Pilots
to “comply with its representational and legal obligations
under the Constitution & Bylaws, ALPA Merger Policy, the
Transition Agreement, and implementing resolutions of the
Executive Council.” Finally, the East Pilots withdrew their
representatives from the committee negotiating a Single
Agreement with the airline, effectively bringing those
discussions to a standstill.

ALPA subsequently presented the Nicolau Award to the
airline for acceptance, consistent with its obligation under the
Transition Agreement to “use all reasonable means” to
compel the airline to accept the arbitrated seniority list. US
Airways accepted the Award a few months later, in December
2007. Id. at 1178.

In the meantime, dissatisfied with ALPA’s commitment
to the Nicolau Award and hoping to prevent the Award from
ever going into effect, the East Pilots decided to leave ALPA
and form a new union. They consulted lawyers, who
cautioned them that “the language you use in setting up your
new union . . . can be used against you. You need to stress
[t]he positives of the new union and not dwell on the award.
Don’t give the other side a large body of evidence that the
sole reason for the new union is to abrogate an arbitration, the
Nicolau award.” The pilots and counsel sought a “roadmap
. . . based on the premise that a new bargaining agent can get
around the award and make the Nicolau award moot.”
Ultimately, the East Pilots created USAPA, which adopted a
constitution committing it “[t]o maintain[ing] uniform
principles of seniority based on date of hire and the
perpetuation thereof.” In November 2007, the National
Mediation Board certified a representation election between
ALPA and USAPA. Predictably, because of the number of
East Pilots, USAPA won the election and was certified as the
collective bargaining representative for all pilots in April
2008.

In September 2008—five months after certification and
almost a year after the airline accepted the Nicolau
Award—USAPA presented a new seniority proposal to US
Airways. This proposal ignored the Nicolau Award, instead
ordering the pilots according to their date of hire. USAPA’s
ordering system effectively forced the West Pilots to the
bottom of the seniority list, leaving them vulnerable to any
furloughs. USAPA made clear that it would never implement
the Nicolau Award.

 

[snapthis]

The court found that USAPAs sole objective in
adopting and presenting its seniority proposal to the Airline
was to benefit the East Pilots at the expense of the West
Pilots, rather than to benefit the bargaining unit as a whole.
 
Id. at *6. It reached this conclusion by determining that the
terms of the Nicolau Award were final and binding, and thus
any amendment USAPA wished to make to that Award
required a legitimate union purpose. Id. at *10. The court
rejected, one by one, each of USAPAs asserted objectives.
Among other things, it found no merit to USAPAs claim that
a different seniority proposal was necessary to break through
the East Pilots impasse and ratify a new collective
bargaining agreement, stating that any asserted impasse was
a pretext for bare favoritism of the East Pilots, and that even
if an impasse did exist, it [was] one that USAPA goaded on
when it misled the majority about its power to improve their
seniority prospects at the expense of the West Pilots. Id. at
 
Having found no legitimate union purpose for USAPA’s
actions, the court entered judgment for the West Pilots and
issued an injunction ordering USAPA “to negotiate in good
faith for the implementation of the Nicolau Award, defending
that Award in negotiations and presenting it with the single
new [collective bargaining agreement] to the pilots for
ratification vote.” Id. at *28. It also ordered USAPA “to
negotiate for the implementation of the Nicolau Award as
part of any single [collective bargaining agreement],
unmodified by additional conditions and restrictions USAPA
would place upon it.”
 
The East Pilots appealed.
 
In Addington I, with one judge
dissenting, we dismissed the case on ripeness grounds,
concluding that the district court did not have jurisdiction to
decide the case in the first instance.
The district court entered judgment in favor of USAPA on
the duty of fair representation and separate representation
claims and a judgment of dismissal without prejudice on the
West Pilots’ claim for attorneys’ fees.3 Id. at *13. In so
holding, the court observed that “USAPA avoided liability on
the DFR claim by the slimmest of margins and the Court has
serious doubts that USAPA will fairly and adequately
represent all of its members while it remains a certified
representative.” Id. at *12. It “stress[ed]” that it was not
holding that USAPA was “free to ignore the Nicolau Award
because its members will refuse to ratify anything other than
a strict date-of-hire system.” Id. at *7. “In effect,” the court
explained, “this is an argument that USAPA is free to treat
the West Pilots poorly because
that is what the majority of its
members wish it to do. That is not the law.” Id. The district
court admonished USAPA that it “cannot justify its actions
by claiming it is merely acting as the conduit for enacting the
East Pilots’ self-serving wishes.” Id.

 

[cactusboy53]

Yeah, it was my fault because ALPA did not vet him out when he was hired by Piedmont. Where the hell was ALPA? I am guessing that USAPA was busy starting up a new union that it did not vet its membership and Ray, an ALPA member, did not out himself. Goddamn ALPA. It failed us way too many times. Those CAL scabs all became instant members just by paying dues. How did the ninety or so AWA scabs get membership in ALPA?

"It's ALPA's fault!"....Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Right here. Who's fault is it this week?

Better hurry. 83 days to get your little duckies in a row.

 

[snapthis]

As the parties proceeded to arbitration, a dispute arose
among USAPA, US Airways, American Airlines, and APA
over whether APA possessed the authority to designate
additional merger committees to participate in the SLI
proceeding.6 APA had agreed that USAPA could continue to
participate in the SLI process even though it no longer
constituted the bargaining representative for all the pilots, but
APA also wished to designate a separate committee to
represent the West Pilots. USAPA disagreed, and, in
February 2014, filed a declaratory judgment action seeking to
prevent the West Pilots’ participation in the SLI process.
APA counterclaimed, seeking a declaration that it had the
discretion to establish a new merger committee if it so chose.
The parties eventually agreed to a settlement, the terms of
which are set forth in the Seniority Integration Protocol
Agreement (“Protocol”).
 
 
On January 9, 2015,
the Preliminary Arbitration Board issued a final Award,
concluding that “APA has the discretion to designate a West
Pilots Merger Committee to participate in the eniority
Integration List (SLI) process, and that it should do so.
 
 
The 9th
The impending SLI Board decision makes it even
more critical that we adjudicate this dispute now.7
Plaintiffs’ duty of fair representation claim is ripe for
adjudication, the requested remedy can ameliorate Plaintiffs’
claimed injury, and neither party argues otherwise. Plaintiffs
have waited almost eight years for a resolution of their duty
of fair representation claim on the merits. We will defer that
resolution no longer.
 
USAPA lost the appeal
Finally, we dismiss USAPA and US Airways’ crossappeals
for failure to present an argument. Fed. R. App. P.
28(a)(8). The judgment of the district court is
 
REVERSED in part, VACATED in part, and
REMANDED. Costs on appeal are awarded to Plaintiffs-
 
Appellants.

 

[luvthe9]

Another holiday weekend in San Diego and here your are posting again after retirement. Why are you not partying on your imaginary boat on Harbor Island or flying off in your imaginary late model aircraft from Montgomery Field? Apparently, you don't even have any friends with boats. Why don't you check and see if someone has imaginary tickets to the Padres games?
 
San Diego is the most fun town in the USA during holiday weekends and here you are posting. Everyone is going somewhere having fun in San Diego on holidays and here you sit at your keyboard. Beach parties, boating, BBQs and hanging out. And here you are posting. 
 
Look, you are history. You are done. You are toast. No more jumpseats. No more employee non-rev with DOH. Now you go behind a new hire cleaner's exchange student with first come/first serve basis. Toast. Toast. A bad memory.
 
You got DOH with the purchase of  PSA. You retired as a senior captain on the 330. You got an immediate pay raise as a F/O at PSA and Armen Janzen ran off with his lump sum after getting us a concessionary contact. Get on your imaginary boat. Continue to post. But we have your number. DOH was always what we did at US Air. It was not something that we came up with because it was best for us. It was DOH at Allegheny/Mohawk. It was DOH at PSA. It was DOH at Piedmont. And it was DOH at that little carrier on the border that no one ever wanted to work for unless they were a reject, a medical condition, a Mesa pilot, or they had no college degree.
 
Apparently, you don't even have a friend with a boat. That is best. Go find one. You are history. You are last year's bad memory.

OUCH!

 

[luvthe9]

Well, since I don't recognize Uturn as anything more than drivel, AND since the author had NOTHING to do with Wye River it seems to me that you are grasping at straws. Further, I do know several people that were there, and your account is (as reported by Uturn, per YOUR report) is FALSE. A FABRICATION. A LIE. I guess that still makes you a LIAR.

Sorry Dave, U-turn was spot on and you should have listened to them, they were smarter than you. IIF you had listened to them you could have had the NIC. Are you calling are side liars, Our people at Wye River got an earful for even offering it to you. Thank you Dave for not taking that offer, a real game changer! I or should I say we owe you a beer!


Now come Dave, big smiles!





From: u-turn [mailto:awapilots@mindspring.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:59 PM
Subject: U-Turn: Taking Responsibility

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


NOTE: to the approximately 50 new subscribers who subscribed between July 16 and July 22, we may have lost your email addresses. If you are still getting U-Turn forwarded to you and not getting it directly, we apologize. Please resubmit your request.

 

[luvthe9]

Dave did you have your head buried in the sand, seems everyone else knew what was going on.............you ignored the facts from YOUR OWN PILOTS!!






Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2007
Subject: The MIGHTY U-Turn Says: WE TOLD YOU SO!



For the past 16 months, everything U-Turn has put out has been attacked and ridiculed by our MEC, their suck-up supporters and many rank and file members. We were called fools, traitors, idiots and worse. We were accused of capitulating to the East and even supporting them. We were accused of crying wolf for our scenarios which could never happen. We were accused of being agents of USAPA.

But with this evenings MEC Hotline written by Chairman John McIlvenna, the truth is now finally coming to light. And all we can say is: we told you so!]
From the October 20 MEC Hotline:

There are a few open issues in the operational and administrative sections, which our negotiators believe can be completed in about a full week of serious negotiations. That leaves scope, pay rates, and retirement contributions, which we also think can be completed in a full week of bargaining.

Completed in a weekIts the cram-down that U-Turn has been predicting for the past six months.



Yesterday, ALPA President Captain Prater, using his authority under the ALPA Constitution & Bylaws, sent a letter to both MECs and all US Airways pilots convening what I would term a last ditch effort to achieve mutually acceptable solutions.



Sorry, Johnnie but what John Prater said was that he was using his authority to:

 

[nic4us]

Sir, you were hired in 2004, you were not paid full f/o pay for 8 years, East f/o's were paid more than you for 8 years and were given 10000 per year for three years during this.
 
Meanwhile East pilots and their new hires were bidding Captain and A330 f/o.
 
Sir, I fail to see how you come up with your cost estimation over your short carreer as a pilot with a real major airline, once you were with US Airways.

 
2004?  hmmm. Lets see..what happened in 2004...oh, I remember, the West got a new contract that paid waaayyy better than the bankrupt, about to go under east had working on LOA93.
 
Lets see, east newhires in 2004??  Again you are dreaming. In 2004 the east had 1700 on furlough, but luckily they could get hired at AWA, and then the merger Transition agreement allowed for them to be recalled to the West or east once the merger happened.
 
I get what is going on here.  Role reversal.  You are on of those 1700 furloughed east guys who thought he could steal a Captain seat from a West pilot.
 
Sorry, Nicolau put you in your rightful place on the bottom, and that is where you sill stay.

 

[snapthis]

From the outset, USAPA was irreconcilably opposed to
 
the negotiating position of the West Pilots. Conceived in the
 
minds of the East Pilots, elected and installed by the East
 
Pilots, and constitutionally committed to a date-of-hire list
 
that favored the East Pilots, USAPA could never fairly and
 
impartially represent the West Pilots. The very reason for its
 
existence was to undermine the Nicolau Award in every
manner that ALPA had refused to do. USAPA was, for all
 
intents and purposes, a representative for the East Pilots. This
 
purpose is nowhere more evident than in the East Pilots’ and
 
USAPA’s own words. In the East Pilots’ consultations with
 
counsel, they sought to develop a roadmap for creating “a
 
new bargaining agent [that] can get around the award and
 
make the Nicolau Award moot.” And although counsel
 
cautioned the East Pilots to take care not to advertise too
 
broadly that the “sole reason for the new union” was to
 
abrogate the Nicolau Award, the East Pilots paid little heed.
 
Their new union’s constitution spoke its founders’ purpose
 
loud and clear. USAPA’s constitution committed it “to
 
maintain[ing] uniform principles of seniority based on date of
 
hire.” This principle flatly contradicted the Nicolau Award,
 
but it ensured that the East Pilots, whose voting strength
 
overpowered the West Pilots by more than two-to-one, would
 
vote to certify USAPA as the new collective bargaining
 
representative. And upon its certification, USAPA’s first act
 
was to submit a new seniority list to US Airways, consistent
 
with the date-of-hire principles it was constitutionally
 
committed to proselytize
 
Although in Addington I we were uncertain about how the
 
 
East and West Pilots’ “internal disputes” would eventually
 
“work themselves out,” 606 F.3d at 1181 n.4, USAPA’s
 
subsequent actions have rendered the picture clear. Since
 
USAPA’s initial act of proposing a revised seniority list in
 
2008, it has continued to oppose any efforts to reach a “Single
 
Agreement,” the consummation of which would
 
automatically trigger the implementation of the Nicolau
 
Award under the terms of the Transition Agreement. Thus
 
far, USAPA has been fully successful. Two years after we
 
decided Addington I, when US Airways and American
 
 
Airlines announced their merger, there was still no Single
Agreement and no Nicolau Award. USAPA succeeded in
 
keeping separate the seniority lists applicable to the East and
 
West Pilots until it finally had the opportunity, in the US
 
Airways–American Airlines merger, to dismantle the Nicolau
 
Award for good.
 
In short, USAPA’s aim to benefit the East
 
Pilots at the expense of the West Pilots is no longer in any
 
doubt.
 
 
As we explained above,
 
USAPA was constitutionally committed to repudiating the
 
Nicolau Award and thus diametrically opposed to the
 
interests of its West Pilot members. Thus, accepting the
 
avoidance of the fight between USAPA and the West Pilots
 
as a legitimate purpose for including Paragraph 10(h) merely
 
blesses USAPA’s discriminatory conduct against the West
 
Pilots. USAPA may not point to a conflict of its own,
 
unjustified creation to bootstrap its way to a legitimate union
 
purpose.9

 

[luvthe9]

 
Sorry, Nicolau put you in your rightful place on the bottom, and that is where you sill stay.

Nothing to be sorry about as there is no NIC........you will stay where you are,



Fair and equitable.......now come on, big smiles, do it for Dave!

 

[luvthe9]

I think any west pilot knows by now there will be no NIC and it will not be DOH.



Fair and equitable........

 

[snapthis]

Far from demonstrating that the
union had a legitimate purpose in negotiating Paragraph
10(h), the paragraph is further evidence of USAPA’s
intransigence and its continuous course of discriminatory
conduct. USAPA’s motive is nowhere more evident than in
its behavior during the MOU roadshows where, as the district
court found, USAPA’s representatives told the East Pilots
that Paragraph 10(h) rendered the Nicolau Award “dead,” but
also “played fast-and-loose” with the West Pilots, deceiving
them about the purpose and effect of Paragraph 10(h).11
USAPA included Paragraph 10(h) solely to benefit the East
Pilots over the West Pilots, to free them from the
consequences of the arbitration to which they were bound.
implementation of the Nicolau Award.” Addington, 2014 WL 321349, at

 

[snapthis]

In its final order, the district court took USAPA to task for its dilatory
 
tactics: “USAPA employed almost every conceivable delaying tactic,”
 
including extensive filings and motions to continue. Id. at *5. Delay
 
worked to USAPA’s benefit. The longer it could postpone its obligations
 
to negotiate for the Nicolau Award, the more likely it was that the West
 
Pilots would give in or that the matter would become moot.