Saabslime
Dysfunctional family
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2001
- Posts
- 509
Captain Duane Woerth
President, ALPA
Dear Captain Woerth,
Your essay, “Never Forget, Never Quit” in the December ‘04 issue of Air Line Pilot Magazine has convinced me to resign from ALPA. For your information, but more for the benefit of my fellow ALPA pilots, who may not realize just how far ALPA national leadership is removed from reality, I am going to explain my objections to the reasoning in your December essay, and my reasons for resigning.
At the beginning of this essay, you discuss the acute awareness of ALPA’s Board of Directors at the October assembly in Florida: “. . . acutely aware that our profession is at a crossroads. One path leads to a world of pilots undercutting each other in a race to the bottom, scrambling to hold on to an ever-diminishing piece of the pie. The other path leads through darkness over rough road to a hard but attainable recovery.”
As one of the many USAirways pilots who have taken a fair share of our profession's collapse, I certainly agree we have been racing to the bottom. Now you go on to describe how the delegates and ALPA board concluded the only path to follow is the trail blazed by ALPA’s first president, Capt. Dave Behncke: “. . . was Franklin Roosevelt’s closest advisor on aviation . . . wooed Congress around the clock, helping to pass legislation that institutionalized our economic strategy . . . ALPA’s special relationship with Roosevelt led to pilot pay increases . . .”
So this is it? This is the secret of ALPA’s success? A “special relationship” with the President of the United States and Congress? Well, heck, Duane, what are you waiting for? Call George Bush and tell him (on our behalf) you’d like to be his special friend!
Pardon my sarcasm. Your essay continues, describing how over the decades, airline management shifted its methods, but their goal remained the same: “. . . to split pilots from one another. Today, airline brands employ elaborate strategies to get pilots who work for separate companies to compete for work on a ‘lowest bid’ basis. Of all the challenges vexing us in the first years of the 21st century, this is the greatest. If we accept the status quo, the race to the bottom will continue.”
Now comes the crux of your essay, when you propose your solution: “But if we join together, some group of pilots within one brand will develop a prototype model that stops the bleeding. If ‘necessity,’ indeed, is the mother of invention, we have all the ‘necessity’ we need to invent that new model.”
YGTBSM! (You’ve Got To Be **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**ting Me!) THIS is your proposed solution? That some clever group of pilots within one brand (I assume a “brand” is an airline like mine?) will develop a prototype model that stops the bleeding? Hmmm. I thought you just said the secret to ALPA’s historical success was to make friends in high places in order to get Congress to pass legislation that institutionalizes our economic strategy!
Near the end of your piece, you speak of standing shoulder to shoulder as one group. You write that we cannot fail the giants who came before us. Even though you have just made it clear that you are waiting for some pilot (“brand”) group among us to come up with the prototype model that stops the bleeding. You boldly proclaim: “We’re going to start right here, right now, to show the world that the 21st-century pilots of ALPA do have the right stuff and understand the power of unity.”
Coming from you, Duane, this is an empty rallying cry. In truth, your entire essay is full of euphemisms and empty words. First you offer us the irrelevant historical model of Capt. Dave Behncke, with his special relationship with Roosevelt which helped ALPA get legislation passed to protect our profession’s economic well-being, but then say our only hope is that some group of pilots from one “brand” will come up with the prototype solution we can unite behind. I have never read such vapid, disingenuous poppycock!
The fact is, you aren’t friends with the president, and there will never be unity among ALPA members as long as we negotiate as separate (“brand’) entities, each ALPA MEC representing itself in the face of a calculated and industry-wide assault by management, driven by the leaders of capital (Wall St.), and supported by the Bush Administration.
UNITY: An industry-wide, ALPA-supported suspension of service (SOS) remains our only hope to send a message to Bush, Wall Street and the American people, and the only effective way to halt the destruction of our profession. But that would take ALPA leadership, starting with you. As a first step, I suggest you take the same 50% pay cut that I have taken over the past three years, and give up your pension, too. That will send me a true message of unity and solidarity, and convince me to stand by you and fight.
Not going to happen? Don’t worry, I didn't think so. That’s why I’m quitting ALPA.
Other reasons I’m quitting ALPA: You and your fellow ALPA-national bureaucrats lost sight of the fight long ago, while you voted yourself obscene salaries, retirement and Beltway perks. Meanwhile, we got decimated. How can you in good conscience accept a salary of $412,728, luxury vehicle, full medical/dental, and an extravagant retirement? Just who do you think is paying for it?
I am. Me and my fellow dues-paying ALPA members. And you know what, Duane? You haven't earned it. You don't deserve it. None of you at ALPA national deserve it. You have failed us, you and all those at ALPA who over the past two decades chose the path of a gutless, passive "association," instead of acting as a courageous national union.
An army without a unified plan—and the courage to execute it—cannot survive in the face of a coordinated attack. We have long been a collection of separated battalions, each fighting their own fight, and shamefully for some, guilty of hoping that the other's demise would save its own skin. "For whom the bell tolls" has never more eloquently applied to a group facing a common enemy. Sadly, we are divided . . . the enemy nearly victorious.
Now I will get to the crux of my letter. I am resigning from ALPA, and publishing my reasons, because I hope to start a landslide of resignations that hurts ALPA where it counts the most: in the pocket. I believe ALPA national needs to feel the same pain we feel, and that won’t happen until a huge number of us vote with our feet, denying ALPA the income stream that allows you to remain comfortably out of touch with our reality.
When ALPA is tottering on bankruptcy, when the association is in financial crisis, only then will the message be heard: your strategy is impotent. No individual group of pilots among us is going to come up with a “prototype model” that defeats management. The only way we are going to win is with true unity: all of us acting as one, at once.
The Power of One: this is our only hope.
When you and your fellow travelers have gone, when the president of ALPA earns what the lowest-paid ALPA captain earns, when he is without full medical/dental, when he has no retirement . . . this will be the man who leads us in a nationwide suspension of service—the only way to make the public, President and Congress share our pain, take notice of our plight, and the only way to fight back against the current legalized assault by airline management against our profession.
SOS—the only way to stop our profession’s death spiral.
“Never Forget, Never Quit” you say at the end of your essay. I will never forget that you failed us, and I will never quit fighting. Regretfully , I do hereby resign from ALPA.
Sincerely,
James L. Hayhurst
ALPA #0628206
President, ALPA
Dear Captain Woerth,
Your essay, “Never Forget, Never Quit” in the December ‘04 issue of Air Line Pilot Magazine has convinced me to resign from ALPA. For your information, but more for the benefit of my fellow ALPA pilots, who may not realize just how far ALPA national leadership is removed from reality, I am going to explain my objections to the reasoning in your December essay, and my reasons for resigning.
At the beginning of this essay, you discuss the acute awareness of ALPA’s Board of Directors at the October assembly in Florida: “. . . acutely aware that our profession is at a crossroads. One path leads to a world of pilots undercutting each other in a race to the bottom, scrambling to hold on to an ever-diminishing piece of the pie. The other path leads through darkness over rough road to a hard but attainable recovery.”
As one of the many USAirways pilots who have taken a fair share of our profession's collapse, I certainly agree we have been racing to the bottom. Now you go on to describe how the delegates and ALPA board concluded the only path to follow is the trail blazed by ALPA’s first president, Capt. Dave Behncke: “. . . was Franklin Roosevelt’s closest advisor on aviation . . . wooed Congress around the clock, helping to pass legislation that institutionalized our economic strategy . . . ALPA’s special relationship with Roosevelt led to pilot pay increases . . .”
So this is it? This is the secret of ALPA’s success? A “special relationship” with the President of the United States and Congress? Well, heck, Duane, what are you waiting for? Call George Bush and tell him (on our behalf) you’d like to be his special friend!
Pardon my sarcasm. Your essay continues, describing how over the decades, airline management shifted its methods, but their goal remained the same: “. . . to split pilots from one another. Today, airline brands employ elaborate strategies to get pilots who work for separate companies to compete for work on a ‘lowest bid’ basis. Of all the challenges vexing us in the first years of the 21st century, this is the greatest. If we accept the status quo, the race to the bottom will continue.”
Now comes the crux of your essay, when you propose your solution: “But if we join together, some group of pilots within one brand will develop a prototype model that stops the bleeding. If ‘necessity,’ indeed, is the mother of invention, we have all the ‘necessity’ we need to invent that new model.”
YGTBSM! (You’ve Got To Be **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**ting Me!) THIS is your proposed solution? That some clever group of pilots within one brand (I assume a “brand” is an airline like mine?) will develop a prototype model that stops the bleeding? Hmmm. I thought you just said the secret to ALPA’s historical success was to make friends in high places in order to get Congress to pass legislation that institutionalizes our economic strategy!
Near the end of your piece, you speak of standing shoulder to shoulder as one group. You write that we cannot fail the giants who came before us. Even though you have just made it clear that you are waiting for some pilot (“brand”) group among us to come up with the prototype model that stops the bleeding. You boldly proclaim: “We’re going to start right here, right now, to show the world that the 21st-century pilots of ALPA do have the right stuff and understand the power of unity.”
Coming from you, Duane, this is an empty rallying cry. In truth, your entire essay is full of euphemisms and empty words. First you offer us the irrelevant historical model of Capt. Dave Behncke, with his special relationship with Roosevelt which helped ALPA get legislation passed to protect our profession’s economic well-being, but then say our only hope is that some group of pilots from one “brand” will come up with the prototype solution we can unite behind. I have never read such vapid, disingenuous poppycock!
The fact is, you aren’t friends with the president, and there will never be unity among ALPA members as long as we negotiate as separate (“brand’) entities, each ALPA MEC representing itself in the face of a calculated and industry-wide assault by management, driven by the leaders of capital (Wall St.), and supported by the Bush Administration.
UNITY: An industry-wide, ALPA-supported suspension of service (SOS) remains our only hope to send a message to Bush, Wall Street and the American people, and the only effective way to halt the destruction of our profession. But that would take ALPA leadership, starting with you. As a first step, I suggest you take the same 50% pay cut that I have taken over the past three years, and give up your pension, too. That will send me a true message of unity and solidarity, and convince me to stand by you and fight.
Not going to happen? Don’t worry, I didn't think so. That’s why I’m quitting ALPA.
Other reasons I’m quitting ALPA: You and your fellow ALPA-national bureaucrats lost sight of the fight long ago, while you voted yourself obscene salaries, retirement and Beltway perks. Meanwhile, we got decimated. How can you in good conscience accept a salary of $412,728, luxury vehicle, full medical/dental, and an extravagant retirement? Just who do you think is paying for it?
I am. Me and my fellow dues-paying ALPA members. And you know what, Duane? You haven't earned it. You don't deserve it. None of you at ALPA national deserve it. You have failed us, you and all those at ALPA who over the past two decades chose the path of a gutless, passive "association," instead of acting as a courageous national union.
An army without a unified plan—and the courage to execute it—cannot survive in the face of a coordinated attack. We have long been a collection of separated battalions, each fighting their own fight, and shamefully for some, guilty of hoping that the other's demise would save its own skin. "For whom the bell tolls" has never more eloquently applied to a group facing a common enemy. Sadly, we are divided . . . the enemy nearly victorious.
Now I will get to the crux of my letter. I am resigning from ALPA, and publishing my reasons, because I hope to start a landslide of resignations that hurts ALPA where it counts the most: in the pocket. I believe ALPA national needs to feel the same pain we feel, and that won’t happen until a huge number of us vote with our feet, denying ALPA the income stream that allows you to remain comfortably out of touch with our reality.
When ALPA is tottering on bankruptcy, when the association is in financial crisis, only then will the message be heard: your strategy is impotent. No individual group of pilots among us is going to come up with a “prototype model” that defeats management. The only way we are going to win is with true unity: all of us acting as one, at once.
The Power of One: this is our only hope.
When you and your fellow travelers have gone, when the president of ALPA earns what the lowest-paid ALPA captain earns, when he is without full medical/dental, when he has no retirement . . . this will be the man who leads us in a nationwide suspension of service—the only way to make the public, President and Congress share our pain, take notice of our plight, and the only way to fight back against the current legalized assault by airline management against our profession.
SOS—the only way to stop our profession’s death spiral.
“Never Forget, Never Quit” you say at the end of your essay. I will never forget that you failed us, and I will never quit fighting. Regretfully , I do hereby resign from ALPA.
Sincerely,
James L. Hayhurst
ALPA #0628206
