All these unions were seen crossing picket lines to support the co. That is what we all call scab unions gentlemen.
AMFA’s +40 year history of raiding other unions (IAM – IBT – TWU) is a matter of record. Anyone with even a grain of common sense wouldn’t expect the unions that were constantly being raided by AMFA to come to their defense. But then AMFA (and maybe you too) live in a make-believe world. As Delle told me the time we met “AA management will pay Aircraft Mechanics much more than they do now because they recognize we’re professionals”. I laughed at him and said you certainly don’t understand American’s management, do you.
You guys need to follow how hard these guys are stretching to find negative information on AMFA, they have to work really hard on it, and stretch out for something that happemd between the APA pilots. Hell, even it was true, it could have been a personality conflic, and I could see that with how confident Seham is and represents himself.
I don't know Seham, but the APA and USAPA don't seem to share your viewpoint
A ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION
P
A December 14,1992
Mr. O. V. Delle-Femine
National Director
Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assoc.
P. O. Box 39
Fayetteville, GA 30214
Mr. Delle-Femine:
As the senior member of the Allied Pilots Association (APA) Board of Directors, I consider your November 17, 1992 letter to APA President LaVoy nothing more than a personal, political attack on behalf of Messrs. Martin Seham and David W. Gould, APA’S VicePresident. It is unthinkable that you have the audacity to question the prerogative and right of the President of APA to change General Counsel. Your intrusive meddling into APA's affairs, business, and policy is a most appallingly deceitful and cowardly act. When did our President or Association ever question or meddle in your association's affairs?
Since you have decided to interfere by making erroneous and disparaging political statements against our President and Association, allow me to respond. Mr. Delle-Femine, there are six billion people in this world. It is an amazing coincidence to me that you courtesy-copied your letter only to David W. Gould, the only person who has stated his intentions to lead the recall of President LaVoy. The Vice President has neither a legal say in, nor a vote in the selection of APA's General Counsel. This being the case, the sole purpose for copying Mr. Gould is obvious to even the most naive political observer: to help him undermine President LaVoy.
This is not the first time Mr. Gould has been the ringleader of a political circus. During a Department of Labor-supervised election, Mr. Gould tried to seat himself prior to the election certification, even though the premature-seating was ruled out of order by the parliamentarian and the chair. That fiasco cost the membership approximately $50,000 for the special Board Meeting Mr. Gould's adherents called.
Currently, the smoke screen for Mr. Gould's divisive political agenda is the General Counsel issue. Once again, the membership will foot the bill for Vice President Gould's politica1 activities. Confrontational behavior and zealous, self-righteous ranting seems to have become Mr. Gould's trademark.
Let's examine Mr. Seham's record a little more closely; unlike you, I was there.
1983 CONTRACT
After deregulation, the APA leadership had it's first chance to show their negotiating skills and determination. With Mr. Seham's counsel and help, they created the most anti-union “B Scale” ever devised. The A-Scale pilots' pay would be subsidized by the B-Scale pilots, or, as Mr. Seham said, the A-Scale pilots kept their present level of-pay and benefits "all at the cost of reduced salaries for newly-hired pilots." Essentially, the negotiators and Mr. Seham agreed that professional pilots at American Airlines were worth less than half of their current wages. Next came the classic management tactic of "divide and conquer” in the form of Supplement B, written by Mr. Seham. Basically, Supplement B stipulates that A-Scale and B-Scale pilots shall never be equal. Mr. Seham drafted management’s dream come true - a permanently divided union at a time the Company was under no financial difficulty.
1987 CONTRACT
Having set the stage in 1983, the big payoff for management was the 1987 contract. With the union now divided, APA negotiators agree to gut our work rules, granted a less than one and one-half percent pay raise per year for the A-Scale pilots, and compensation for the B-Scale pilots far below the market level. As the icing on the cake, they gave away our scope clause, to allow management to buy and operate commuter airlines flying up to seventy-seat aircraft. The Company was in an excellent financial position afterAPA negotiated a contract that put our pilots behind in pay and benefits to everyone except Continental Airlines, so senior AMR management rewarded itself with a lucrative stock bonus plan. Mr. Seham called it a victory; for whom was it a victory?
1990 CONTRACT
By this time, senior A-Scale pilots at AAL were flying "wide-body" aircraft for narrow-body pay rates, B-Scale was on the verge of being institutionalized, and management intended to "re- vamp" our medical benefits, once again at the expense of the new-hire pilot. Through a grassroots campaign, which climaxed in the firing of our negotiating committee, we turned things around. In the middle of a recession and war, we negotiated the best contract in seven years, while Mr. Seham had to be dragged along throughout the entire process.
LUMP SUM ARBITRATION: Mr. Seham lost the Lump Sum Benefit arbitration award on the merits of the ease. The arbitrator awarded the benefit “only" to pilots hired prior to 1983 due to Supplement B, which was drafted by Mr. Seham. Four years after
creating the B-Scale, one more wedge was driven into the membership by Mr. Seham's hand. It was President LaVoy, while a member of the new negotiating committee, who was able to secure the Lump Sum Benefit for all pilots and bring the members together, not
Mr. Seham.
MIA TDY: Mr. Seham lost the MIA TDY arbitration case that was initiated by the former president.
APA EAGLE STRUCTURE: Under Mr. Seham's counsel in 1986, the former negotiating committee gutted our scope clause to allow the Company to buy Eagle commuter airlines. Later in 1987, the former APA president appointed an Ad Hoc committee (two of the members were also negotiators), to determine if Eagle pilots should be APA members and sit on the APA Board of Directors. With the advice and counsel of Mr. Seham, they took in the Eagle pilots and created the structure currently in place.
APA DRUG TESTING AGREEMENT: With Mr. Seham's counsel, his son helped negotiate our drug testing agreement. Mr. Seham boasted how his son did a “bang up job". The Sehams did a bang up job all right, but tor managemcnt, not the pilots. The agreement must be an historic first. The union actually negotiated to fire it's own pilots. The agreement includes no rehabilitation for it’s pilots as does other airlines, and is far more restrictive than the government regulation itself. Management loved it so much, they gave this agreement, paid for by our members, to all other employee groups.
Do you think Mr. Crandall is relieved because he does not have to face "the man who beat him at every turn"? Sir, all I can say is, you don't know Mr. Crandall. It is my opinion that he would love to keep Mr. Seham for the next round of negotiations.
After twenty-five years of Mr. Seham's counsel, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association actively represents no one. Essentially, your union is "on paper" only. Such a record speaks volumes about your choice of counsel.
Sincerely,
Captain Dennis Petretti
Chairman, LGA
DP/cle
cc: APA National Officers
APA Board of Directors
Thanks for the reminder. I knew Seham was fired by the Allied Pilots Association but I forgot the exact reason why.
Lee Seham was fired by former USAPA President, Mike Cleary last year:
Monday, November 7, 2011
Fellow Pilots:
Rumors and tall tales abound on the topic of Lee Seham's relationship with USAPA. Much has been written but, as usual, please take note of the authors of these grandiose yarns and you may find some insight into the motives behind these stories. But here's what has actually happened. To start with, it is worth noting that the current Officers inherited the relationship with Mr. Seham - Seham was chosen precertification.
During the summer of 2010, we recognized that Lee Seham represented a single point of failure for our union. His firm is composed of himself as the sole attorney capable of litigating and a group of journeymen in support. If something, anything, happened to Seham then USAPA would be in trouble because there is no heir apparent inside his firm. And so we sought out to find another competent RLA firm, not to replace Seham, but one with which we could create and test a business relationship in order to eliminate the single point of failure. Competent, powerful labor firms are difficult to come by but after searching for months, we had narrowed that field to Brian O'Dwyer's firm when the Pension Investigation Committee (PIC) needed counsel to potentially investigate State Street Bank (SSB). The PIC attorney was conflicted with SSB, and O'Dwyer was the perfect fit with his extensive pension litigation experience and deep bench.
And so in the spring of 2011, the Board approved the creation of a business relationship with O'Dwyer and we started assigning work to this firm to test their work product. At that time, I personally called Seham and told him the reasons that O'Dwyer had been hired. I assured him that he was not being replaced. There is, after all and unfortunately, plenty of legal work at USAPA to go around.
Now I frankly would have been more than happy to leave well enough alone at this point and to not have to go into the following detail; there just isn't any value for us in telling every detail of the occasional unpleasant business relationship. But the truth of this issue has now been clouded by those who are experts in smearing anyone in their way - they are the dying emblems of old ALPA. So here we are; time for a little truth tellin'.
For a very long time we had been warned about problems with Seham by many others including the Teamsters (their opinions of Seham are not printable), SWAPA (the Southwest pilots' union, who terminated their relationship with Seham just this year for "incompetence and billing irregularities"), APA (the Allied Pilots Association, who fired Seham for a variety of issues including pro-management business relationships), to numerous respected individual labor and RLA attorneys who are aware of Seham's poor reputation among labor advocates. These concerns were relayed to us over time and we took each of them into consideration along the way by doing our best to investigate them and assigning some level of veracity to each of the claims. Each of these concerns with Seham were addressed openly and proactively with him in an attempt to correct problem areas and to stay on track. The efforts to resolve them internally were not successful.
One of the repeated concerns from others is that Seham has a record of becoming vindictive when his business relationships end. Through the latespring, despite my assurances to him to the contrary, Seham became convinced that he was being replaced. This was not ever the plan. The plan was only to eliminate the single point of failure for our organization. At this point, Mr. Seham started engaging in the political process inappropriately. There is never a time when counsel should be politically engaged within the union, but this in fact happened on two occasions where Seham participated in secret telephone calls with certain Board members, plotting for the overthrow of Officers who he believed stood in the path of his USAPA revenue stream. (These calls are acknowledged by those who participated.) This behavior is not only outrageous; it breaches his fiduciary obligation to USAPA as counsel.
The politics continued when Seham began informing line pilots that he wasn't consulted about USAPA's status quo filing in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) and that the filing would fail and be harmful to our other litigations. This was most remarkable because Mr. Seham was in full favor and support of the EDNY filing - right up until the time that he wasn't the one filing the case. The EDNY case was filed because we believe the Company has been violating the law by frustrating the grievance, arbitration and negotiating process to their economic advantage. When the Company violates the law, I believe that the pilots want us to fight back with the tools available regardless of how much of an uphill battle it is to show up in court in America as a labor union. And that is what we did - we made a tough decision to defend the pilots' rights with the EDNY filing.
Finally, concerns over Mr. Seham's billing practices were coming to light. Although, by his own admission, we had substantially reduced our use of his firm during the late spring and summer, Seham's bills were actually increasing. At this point we became aware of the overbilling problems the Southwest pilots had encountered with Seham. Scrutiny of the bills produced more questions than answers and we sought professional advice to protect the organization. Many firms specializing in auditing legal bills were contacted and interviewed. Preliminary reviews by auditors told us that the Seham bills were "un-auditable", "some of the most uninformative invoices ever seen", and "a significant deviation from the standard bills law firms submit". This preliminary indication that there may have been irregularities in Seham's billing practices with USAPA is a situation that the Board has a responsibility to look into. And so, faced with these allegations, I recommended that the Board authorize an audit of all of our legal bills, which is under way. Unfortunately, after eight weeks of asking the Seham firm for the information necessary to audit the bills, not a single shred of the requested information has been forthcoming. Zero.
Interestingly, instead of cooperating with USAPA and simply providing the requested documentation, Seham has retained counsel which specializes in defending attorneys against ethics charges and disbarment proceedings. I for one find it interesting that he feels the need for this when he has simply been asked to provide substantiation for his billing to us. USAPA has an absolute right to the information we are requesting. The audit will proceed, with or without Mr. Seham's cooperation. Each of our other law firms has indicated they will cooperate fully.
We have found that Mr. Seham has presided over his own demise at many labor unions, and he certainly isn't helping himself here at USAPA. I would be happier if this all were not so, but our obligations to maintain competent, ethical and effective counsel will not be hindered.
I am happy to report that attorneys Brian O'Dwyer and Pat Szymanski are offering us many opportunities that were not previously available. Most recently, the Board approved the reassignment of the Phoenix Declaratory Judgment case to Szymanski and O'Dwyer. Aside from the fact that we cannot be represented by a firm that presents basic trust issues, O'Dwyer is a seasoned labor attorney with political clout that was simply unavailable before. Szymanski is a very experienced RLA attorney who served as general counsel to the Teamsters and Mr. Hoffa for seven years. Their approach is decidedly different from the high confrontation that marked Seham's interaction with everyone, from the judges to his attorney counterparts on the other side. Being advocates for your position doesn't require foment and hostility with those on the other side. A fresh approach to our legal strategy will produce healthier results.
I know that there are additional questions that have been raised. If you want more information, one accurate place to get more information is the recent CLT update that you can read by clicking here. In addition, we have assembled a short series of Q&As on this topic that you can read by clicking here.
None of these decisions were made lightly. All were made after due deliberation and after a full review of the facts. This organization will be managed methodically and dispassionately with only your best interests in mind. I am extremely confident that we are in a position to move forward with more competent legal counsel than we had before. We are well aware that all of this may not be very interesting to many pilots and we will be communicating to you on the critical topics of the status of our contract and seniority dispute in the next few days.
Sincerely,
Captain Michael Cleary
President
