If Jamie wants to point to the Republic, F9 seniority award I think we should look at the important parts of that award. Which BTW was relative.
It would appear that the “gold standard” view of DOH is not shared by everyone.
In this case the arbitrator looked a history and future. Just like Nicolau. You see where it says AT THE TIME? At the time US Airways was going out of business. Next it says to share in the growth oppotunities. It does not say one side gets to keep everything.
So much for the east logic of just placing west names on an east list. It is a new list.
Quoting Nicolau in our case. Could it be that other arbitrators think that Nicolau got it right?
Quoting Nicolau again.
Another rejection of DOH. Status, pay and benefit is a factor in determining seniority. But in this case DOH does not work. Where have we seen that logic before? Roland Wilder has stated that poor contracts (LOA 93) are used by the arbitrator to determine seniority and use the increase in contract benefits to offset seniority. A crappy contract will cost you at the arbitration. Just like Nicolau said. Just like the arbitrator in the dispatchers arbitration said.
The fact is that the overwhelming major of pilots here won't vote for a contract with that award. In fact, so many here didn't agree with it because, again, AWA was in the same boat financially. Career expectations for you were virtually non-existing.
Read page 44: "in the vernacular, the very word "seniority" is equated with length of service."
My point, one more time, is that had our time in service been relatively close like in this case i think things would have been different.
There not.
BTW, arbitrators cannot "enforce" an award. If the majority of the pilots don't like their contract they can strike, which we can't do now, they can strike if and when the NMB releases us, which we still won't do because there are too many people chasing too few jobs.
Again, I'm not sugar coating the obvious...I just state it.
Nicolau sread between me and your guys is seventeen years JUNIOR. Too much ground difference then in Eischen with one or two years.
Again, you're free to continue tilting at windmills.
BTW:
"Each of the Parties to the DRA poured significant expenditures of resources, time, energy and good faith resources into the creation of the IMSL through this arbitration award.
To indefinitely delay the effectiveness and applicability of the awarded IMSL, for an open-ended post-Award negotiating period, would invite tactical procrastination calculated to vitiate the cardinal requirement of DRA §V(g) that "the award of the arbitrator . . .shall be final and binding on the Parties to this Agreement and on the pilots employed by RAH and its affiliates".
Recent experience demonstrates that concerns over such a disastrously destructive epilogue are neither alarmist nor simply academic. See,
Addington v. US Airline Pilots Association, 606 F.3d 1174 (9th Cir. 2010). Delaying implementation of the IMSL for an undefined open-ended period of time would be more than intolerably corrosive of labor management relations.
Finally, it would be manifestly unfair and inequitable for the Award to require furloughed pilots, with integrated but indefinitely tolled seniority numbers on the awarded IMSL, to remain mired in unemployment as RAH hires new pilots off the street."
Hindsight over foresight, to be sure, but our situation is what it is and we are all willing to work o separate contracts until the cows come home. I actually believe that this "thorny issue" will play well into the hands of the APA when they petition the UCC to seek a standalone issue before they emerge from BK.
