Originally Posted by WhaleFR8
The point I am trying to make is why fight for a scope clause that will cause the loss of ALL jobs and cause the airline to go away. Wouldn't it be smarter to finish the merger and negotiate for a decent scope clause and decent wages. There certainly is a small chance to find an arbitrator who will rule in favor of Bobbrobin. That is what they want to do; delay delay while filing continuous grievances and hope to get an arbitrator that will rule favorably for them. But my question is, To what end? And, are you all willing to bet your jobs on that small chance? What will be the end result? And the really big question is are you all playing right into Prater and Helling's hands?
I have said this before and will continue to say it. Don't win the battle if you don't want to lose the war. Look at what Polar has already lost. With the June furloughs they will be roughly 1/3 the size they were when Bobb took office. In fact they will be EXACTLY the size that the Atlas merger committee said they would be. 123 pilots. With 516 coming back to Atlas, Polar will be down to 5 planes running a few Japan routes and one SA route. All under Bobbrobins tenure.
How long will the shrinkage continue - and WHY? Wouldn't it be better to merge and all work together to get to a decent contract. Many of the Atlas pilots, as Atlast said, will be losing seniority - but all are willing to do so because it is what was agreed on when they agreed on "binding arbitration," because they want to get to the merged contract negotiations. That is impossible right now due to Bobbmarkrobin.
Just FYI, this will be my last post on any AAWH crap. This is it because it is pointless, and you are stuck in a mindset and bound not to change. Do you read what you write? Do you think about what you are saying? Did you look what AAWH did?
You are so stuck on a push that was driven by AAWH under different times and conditions. Regardless of the road travelled, look at the beginning and where we're at now.
In the beginning they said "one airline, one certificate, one pilot group". Both groups agreed to this fact. Under the above conditions, the merger process was begun. The COMPANY changed the game when they sold 49% of PO. That is a MAJOR change in what was presented. I would never continue a deal when a major tenant is changed, I wouldn't expect my MEC to either. I'm sure you can understand that. Thinking about that, I don't understand why the 5Y MEC wasn't upset about the restructuring.
The most contankerous of all merger issues, seniority, was settled. Done. Everyone agreed, it was arbitrated, and appearantly done well, as pilots from both sides complained. If there is one good-faith indication of commitment to a merger, a completed seniority list is pretty high up on the list.
After that was complete PO had a minority share sold off, and is to be maintained as a seperate certificate. PO pilots are disagreeing with 5Y pilots and the company on what constitutes a "complete operational merger". The grievance process is on going. Instead of letting it maintain it's course, people get on pprune and bitch about PO's foot dragging. Do you think the process would have gone any faster if it was 5Y filing the grievance?
Why fight for scope in an existing CBA? That may be the dumbest question (rhetorical or not) of a union member ever asked. SCOPE is the only thing that keeps us in work. The rest of the CBA is worthless without any jobs to have. Go back and read the post where the merged items are listed. About 0 are operational. Everything listed was ADMINISTRATIVE. The OpSpecs are identical verbiage because all opspecs are created equal. An operator looks at the menu and orders the paragraphs they want. One would imagine our opspecs look damn near identical to Connie's or Southern's.
You keep saying Polar is delaying. I think the company did a pretty good job taking up the 3 days of scheduled arbitration on their grievance.
Speaking of that, how come you have NEVER once assigned any blame on the company?
Here are the threats:
1) Polar will be a 6 airplane fleet forever. You don't wanna be a 6 airplane fleet.
2) Polar is not economical as a 6 airplane fleet (GSS appearantly makes money flying 3 -400s around. That's 3 airplanes that 5Y or PO pilots SHOULD be flying.....and yes I have been under a scope clause where GSS could exist, but would be flown by unionized pilots of the parent company)
3) We're going to ship all ya'll up to ANC
4) PO will be a 1 airplane airline.
5) 516 is going back to the lessor
BTW, according to our CBA, they can't furlough when alliance flying is occuring. JC sent out a copy of the alliance flying agreement.
Do you really think DHL will pull all the flying if PO wins the arbitrations, and remain a separate group? Would AAWH go through all this dog-and-pony show about DHL in EVERY SINGLE presentation if they thought it was a shaky contract? Did you read the BSA and the FSA?
They do a great job hyping up all the work they have for 5Y, and for PO, so why is either company threatened for a work-force reduction?
Polar was already awarded more flying for DHL and the aiplanes are ACMI from Atlas with Atlas Crews flying them. (Look up the press release yourself).
Do you really think the airline will be shut down due to one grievance? The shareholders will put the uppermanagement's heads on spears and drag their bodies through the townsquare if the f-up the DHL deal.
What happens if they remove the PO pilots from the PO certificate? Will they try to remove all the pilots from the 5Y certificate next? Then will they fire all of us during negotiations when there's a group of pilots that will contract to them cheaper than we work? If the PO pilots are removed from the certificate, they will do the same for 5Y.
Follow the money. As much as they'd like to make us think they really care one way or the other about this, but they have a publicly-traded company to run. They pay those mofos big money to make the stock price go up. If PO tanks, they stock will drop. If they drop the DHL deal, there will be no one in upper management you'd recognize.
These boys wanna play in the big leagues. They care about $$$. The CFO, at the April 14 investor day (it's the one where there was one VP left off the flow chart.). was asked how much senior captains make. He guessed "200 grand all-in". They did know that they are able to stretch the 5Y workforce by 24% due to the "flexibility (ie involuntary extension)" of the Atlas crews. They don't know what they pay you, but they know it's cheaper to pay a premium for extension than hire more crews and let you have a life.
At the end of the day, they'll grow the company regardless of one pilot group or 2. This isn't going to be the end of the world for PO if we win, and it won't be the end of the world for 5Y either.
No matter what the outcome is, I'll go to work, flip my switches and look forward to seeing my family as soon as I can, whether it's here, Connie's or god knows where.
Oh, please re-read my post about the Teamsters. Been there, done that.
fly safe, and you best hope for us all.