990Convair

Matty, fine work here.

Magenta Line

Yes, nice work Matty and the numbers alone suggest a massive training letter not to mention volunteer and draft to cover shortfalls.

As has been explained to me, a huge training letter is also not a good thing either (unless you're one of those school house homeboys).

DaRaiders

I also should say that I am not happy that a realistic number may "only" be 150 pilots. If it happens to you, it is little comfort. On a side note, my handy ALPA calender said 149 pilots turned 60 in 2008.

captexpress

I see that some of you are complaining that an explanation from you Rep's as to what really went down with the firing has not yet been forthcoming?

Give it a little time,.......getting the story straight among that many people takes time, but expect the usual......you know, vague or oblique suggestions as to the man's suitability or capability to do the job.

I have a message to any MEC Rep's lurking here. Do the job you were elected to do, or skip the trip drops and start hub turning again with the rest of us. If you want us to follow you, stop dropping bombs on your own troops. If you didn't see this one coming, you have your work cut out for you, but since you all voted to accept FE's resignation, I think you owe us all an explanation as to why.

Warning. If you keep up with this type of dysfunctional leadership, the hammer is going to drop.

I recall a conversation I had a while back with an angry young FO who recounted with me a story of his getting ejected from a union meeting for sticking to his guns and raising the BS flag on the way the MEC was dealing with the age 60 issue. I have been thinking about that exchange lately, and considering this latest round of nonsense, I say bravo, consider it a badge of honor, we should have more such people willing to bloody their noses for sticking to their principles. I know one thing, if the MEC keeps this up....someday soon they will have many of us to eject...or quite possibly, it might go the other way around.

Stop screwing with our Union and do your job.

Now, you have our attention. So what was the reason you fired our Neg Chairman?

990Convair

Folks, this is nothing more than common sense. If FE really desired to resign for personal reasons, we would all have a letter in our in-box and quite probably a post on this site saying such directly from FE.

The absence of that is clearly indicative of a head-hunting mission carried out by the MEC.

Lips are sealed as per the head-cheese. The only thing I don't get though is why doesn't FE come forward and tell us the real reason? My thought is that he knows the truth would permanently fracture any unity we have and start the cascading effect of chaos amongst the rank and file members.

We need somebody with some legal knowledge to figure out a way to find out the WHOLE truth on this. There is no doubt the facts are being covered up, and we should all be PO'd about it.

Jetjok

990,

Thanks for your insightful comments. Especially where you represent your guesses as truths. Each paragraph is a study in taking a piece of information and extrapolating it into "fact."

FedElta

" chirp, chirp"......Bueler?...Bueler?......Albie?...Albie? ..."chirp, chirp."

Daniel Larusso

Not when you consider the real purpose(s) of such an announcement.

Look at the flip side of this though if you're the company. Whatever LOA/side deal you want obviously depends on votes. In their mind, they can probably buy a good portion of the senior votes with promises of increased block hours, the middle of the road will likely be split but skewed towards no, so that leaves scaring the bottom of the list into voting for some tripe that ultimately gains us nothing and potential puts some on the street with a longer time before recall.

It's happened before in the industry, and in fact several of those bottom 600 people on our list are from places where they voted others off the island while completely ignoring the rising water at their own feet.

Daniel Larusso

When it comes to union stuff industry-wide(inclusive), how many 'facts' did we the membership know at times that would be appropriate for us to make truly informed judgments/votes? The tally is low in aggregate and those who did know usually were/are the proponent of hysteria types and/or the various committee chairs and members.

AerisArmis

It pains me to say this but Foxhunter was right. Had we stayed with FPA, the current union leadership would have been gone many moons ago. Now, I'm personally pro-ALPA but in our case, the foxes are in the chicken coop and we can't get them out. (So we need a Foxhunter?). When FPA first came into being, we had three block reps who got that DW attitude and were promptly recalled by the members of their block. Gone, toast, sayonara! We had some growing pains but after a short while we had a darn fine group who either represented their block or were one vote away from night hub turns. The problem with ALPA is that when you get bad actors in the leadership positions, they're like federal judges, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. DW is well aware that in a straight up vote of confidence, he'd poll the same kind of numbers Ralph Nader is looking at but he could care less. Just pass the Dom Perignon buddy and fire up a Cubano! Foxhunter, ahem, er, stammer.....you were right!