5030,
I read the award cover to cover!. Have you? The fence was a joke and fell the instant age 65 went through.
The fairness of a merger is NEVER determined by DOH. NO one is EVER satisfied with that (unless they are made the absolute top banana) as it does nothing to protect what you brought to the table (unless of course you are made number 1, which over the long term is what was EXACTLY done for the AMwest pilots, since the USair pilots will retire en masse in a very short period of time)
The fairness of a merger is determined by fences. Even if they had fenced off only philly and not the rest of the USair operation there would have been something approaching fairness. Then you could have stapled the USair pilots and they would still have had what they brought to the table as far as their career expections. They would have had a chance of rapid upgrades due to retirement, and still would have born the full risk of furloughs, WHICH is exactly what they brought to the table.
And America West (which wasn't as rosey as you paint it) would have had relatively fewer retirements and less risk of furlough. Bland safe and stable. Exactly what America West had before.
Instead the westies let a few geezers past them on the list, but they will be retired very soon, so it doesn't really effect them, INSTEAD, they got to benefit from an enourmous wave of retirements that was never theirs to start with. They were granted with the stroke of a pen, the equivielent of 15 years of service.
The westies absolutely won the lottery. Watch em all go east be captains soon. They had no experience with mergers and got very lucky from a very poor arbitrator. The Easties and done integrations before, (piedmont-allegeny, allegeny-mohawk, Usair-trumpshuttle) Binding arbitration in the USA is a travesty, because there is no avenue of appeal when a mistake is made, and I have seen several mistakes lately. ("Sick if needed" arbitration at AA had a result that has no grounding in law, and didn't even look at the sections of the contract provided by either side, but there is no avenue of appeal) If it had gone the other way around the westies would have been squealing.
Cheers
Wino
(Disclaimer, I have NEVER been a USair or America West pilot in any capacity or for any subsidiary or feeder, IOWs, I am the closest thing to a true neutral party here, I have been an ALPA member twice, a teamster twice and am in the APA. I am a strong supporter of ALPA, but not in this case. They were wrong)