Evidently there is a LOT of misinformation out there...


mrbally,

No one has said anything about illegal job action. We are planning to go to court to get a declaration that this is indeed a major dispute, and then if a court decides we can initiate self-help based on UAL illegally making a unilateral change to our collective bargaining agreement, only then will we consider any type of job action. Until then in fact AFA is urging its members to NOT do anything that could be perceived as an illegal job action.

About the ESOP, actually it now more than ever seems that it was a smart decision for us to not join. If the ESOP is such a great thing, how come the pilots and mechanics jumped out of it as soon as they could?

And actually our 10-year agreement is turning out to be very good leverage... see comments below to wharvey...

And about our "glorious" Union leaving us with "zilch" leverage... first you seem to have a misconception (or are trying to be misleading, not sure which) about who makes up labor unions: we Flight Attendants ARE the Union; the Union is not some group of "outsiders" that came in, negotiated an Agreement, and then left, as you seem to be implying in your second paragraph. Second, "our Union" DID negotiate great leverage in the form of our scope language, which makes it illegal for UAL to complete the transaction with US Airways and operate US Airways (even separately) without using Flight Attendants from the UAL F/A System Seniority List. Furthermore, we already have a binding decision from an arbitrator (as required by the RLA) unequivocally supporting our scope language in a previous case of UAL trying to purchase another carrier and operating it separately (Air Wisconsin).

And finally, this sentence just makes NO sense and is not how the RLA works AT ALL:

"Once they get such a finding they'll declare the contract void, lock everyone out."


wharvey,

I am not sure, but it seems like you may not fullyunderstand how airline labor negotiations work. (And I don't mean that as an insult in any way; these types of negotiations are unique and usually complicated, so most people who are not directly involved in them are not aware of some of the details.) UAL was not "forced to sign a long term deal." The 10 year length of the current collective bargaining agreement was negotiated and agreed upon by both sides. And the truth is, we ARE honoring it. UAL is the one that wants to change it unilaterally, not us! THEY are the party that wants to make changes to it so they can go ahead with the US Airways transaction. WE are perfectly content to sit and let our Agreement run its course and not discuss anything until it becomes amendable in 2006.

As an aside, there is a whole other issue of UAL NOT honoring smaller points in our Agreement on a day-to-day basis in terms of scheduling issues. We would in fact be ecstatic just to make UAL honor ALL the details of the Agreement.

"Things" didn't just "change." We all recognize that this industry is in a constant state of flux in one area or another, often due to forces beyond anyone's control. In this case, though, UAL wants to consciously do something that is in direct violation of the agreement they signed with us.

The merger does not automatically "trigger renegotiations in our contract." Our Agreement is not amendable until 2006. If UAL wants to make changes to our Agreement before 2006 (which they will have to in order to legally complete the US Airways transaction), we just want them to pay us the full value of those changes, and make it worth our while. Otherwise we will just expect UAL to uphold its end of the deal, as we expect currently.