BOS Pilots,
In my previous update, I told you the following concerning John Prater's July 17th meeting at the AFL-CIO HQ in Washington DC:
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"I plan to attend, because there's a message I want to deliver, and that message is that regardless of the arguments swirling around this Award, there is one truth that everyone needs to understand. This Award is not acceptable to the East because it will plunge us into a civil war between the have and have-nots the magnitude of which is beyond comprehension. We will not allow that to happen, ALPA National should not allow that to happen, and no amount of "consensual" Band-Aid "fixes" will change this fact, nor allow either of us to escape from our responsibilities."
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Not only did I deliver that message, but so did everyone else on your MEC. As John Prater said at the end..."if this day's proceedings had been recorded... the pilots of both airlines would have been proud of the way they had been represented." He further underscored this in the ALPA Fastread Newsflash, which stated..."At the end of the day, Capt. Prater applauded both groups for working diligently in good open discussion while recognizing strong opposing views."
My point is this. Regardless of what you might hear from the cynics, your MEC is not, and will not, negotiate away from our stated position that the Nicolau award is unacceptable to the pilots of the East.
Our message, and the messages that you've been sending, have apparently been heard by ALPA National. The day's discussion focused on solutions to the problem, and the only one which, in my view, will be a realistic one, is to keep these two operations separately indefinitely.
As I pointed out at the meeting, "indefinitely" means that there's no intent to ever put the operations together, thereby making the Nicolau Award totally irrelevant in our yet to be negotiated Separate Operations Agreement. And being totally irrelevant, the Nicolau Award can then sit on a self in the archives of ALPA in perpetuity, with no need of the Executive Council to ever release it.
What is also unacceptable to everyone in the room, and as repeated by John Prater and Paul Rice throughout the day, is to allow Doug Parker a continuation of his free ride with our bottom of the industry pay and working conditions. So simultaneous with an agreement with the Company to run these operations separately would be our negotiation of a new, identical Contract for both the East and West.
Much work needs to be done on this concept, to be sure, but as we spent a great deal of time discussing this one solution, there is already momentum here that we must continue to develop.
What about the Executive Council, and our request for them to set aside the Award, and the West's equally adamant request that they stand behind it? That they'll be deliberating over the next few days, and they gave no indication as to where they might go with this.
I told you these letters would be frank, and so they will be. In my view, the Executive Council will not overturn the Award, accepting the fact that it may start a "stampede for the doors" on the East. Moreover, I'm not willing to wait for 2-3 years of litigation to take our chances that this award will be thrown out in court, only to go back to yet another arbitrator if it does.
That being said, it's time to find an approach that both indefinitely shelves the Nicolau Award and at the same time brings the improvements to our pay and working conditions that we rightly deserve. An approach, by the way, that is not dependent on the decisions made by either the Executive Council, the courts, or an arbitrator.
In my previous update, I told you the following concerning John Prater's July 17th meeting at the AFL-CIO HQ in Washington DC:
-------------------------
"I plan to attend, because there's a message I want to deliver, and that message is that regardless of the arguments swirling around this Award, there is one truth that everyone needs to understand. This Award is not acceptable to the East because it will plunge us into a civil war between the have and have-nots the magnitude of which is beyond comprehension. We will not allow that to happen, ALPA National should not allow that to happen, and no amount of "consensual" Band-Aid "fixes" will change this fact, nor allow either of us to escape from our responsibilities."
------------------------
Not only did I deliver that message, but so did everyone else on your MEC. As John Prater said at the end..."if this day's proceedings had been recorded... the pilots of both airlines would have been proud of the way they had been represented." He further underscored this in the ALPA Fastread Newsflash, which stated..."At the end of the day, Capt. Prater applauded both groups for working diligently in good open discussion while recognizing strong opposing views."
My point is this. Regardless of what you might hear from the cynics, your MEC is not, and will not, negotiate away from our stated position that the Nicolau award is unacceptable to the pilots of the East.
Our message, and the messages that you've been sending, have apparently been heard by ALPA National. The day's discussion focused on solutions to the problem, and the only one which, in my view, will be a realistic one, is to keep these two operations separately indefinitely.
As I pointed out at the meeting, "indefinitely" means that there's no intent to ever put the operations together, thereby making the Nicolau Award totally irrelevant in our yet to be negotiated Separate Operations Agreement. And being totally irrelevant, the Nicolau Award can then sit on a self in the archives of ALPA in perpetuity, with no need of the Executive Council to ever release it.
What is also unacceptable to everyone in the room, and as repeated by John Prater and Paul Rice throughout the day, is to allow Doug Parker a continuation of his free ride with our bottom of the industry pay and working conditions. So simultaneous with an agreement with the Company to run these operations separately would be our negotiation of a new, identical Contract for both the East and West.
Much work needs to be done on this concept, to be sure, but as we spent a great deal of time discussing this one solution, there is already momentum here that we must continue to develop.
What about the Executive Council, and our request for them to set aside the Award, and the West's equally adamant request that they stand behind it? That they'll be deliberating over the next few days, and they gave no indication as to where they might go with this.
I told you these letters would be frank, and so they will be. In my view, the Executive Council will not overturn the Award, accepting the fact that it may start a "stampede for the doors" on the East. Moreover, I'm not willing to wait for 2-3 years of litigation to take our chances that this award will be thrown out in court, only to go back to yet another arbitrator if it does.
That being said, it's time to find an approach that both indefinitely shelves the Nicolau Award and at the same time brings the improvements to our pay and working conditions that we rightly deserve. An approach, by the way, that is not dependent on the decisions made by either the Executive Council, the courts, or an arbitrator.
"fences" or "the east refuses to negotiate". It's about the Alpo EC trying to keep on tap dancing in the hopes that they can avoid a decert on the east. I'm fairly sure that the clowns at Alpo Nat'l have no concern for the Nic award's effect on the east..but they're concerned about it's likely effect on Alpo membership.
