Certainly I can. Let's look at a real-life example. A good friend of mine was on our Merger Committee, but before he retired from USAirways early and came to AirTran, he was a USAirways captain and member of the AAA MEC. He was on the MEC during their bankruptcy when all of the tough decisions had to be made.
For example, a decision had to be made about their pension. USAirways was mere days away from Chapter 7. Their cash was almost completely depleted, and they no assets left to sell or leverage. A huge payment to the pension plan was about to come due if something wasn't done. The pilot group had made it abundantly clear that they didn't want to give up the pension plan. But, the problem was, the pilot group didn't know just how close the company was to liquidation. And if the union went out publicly and disclosed the information that they had been given under confidentiality agreement about just how bad the situation was, then it would have gotten to the press, and all bookings on USAirways would have come to a screaming halt, because no one wants to buy a ticket on an airline that is going to park all of its airplanes in three days.
So, the AAA MEC couldn't divulge all of the information, both because of confidentiality agreement and because it would be bad for the airline and the pilot group to do so. And the pilot group, without all of the information, had told the MEC not to terminate the pension. So what is the MEC to do? Are they supposed to listen to the polling data, which is based on incomplete information? Or are they supposed to do what they know is in the best interests of the pilots and terminate the pension plan, even in direct contradiction to what the pilots said they wanted?
The MEC did the right thing: they ignored what the pilots told them, realizing that the pilots didn't have the information necessary to make that decision correctly, and terminated the pension plan. As a result, USAirways didn't have to make that huge pension contribution, and they were able to get the financing that they needed to continue operations, which wouldn't have come if they had had to make that pension payment.
Was the MEC wrong to do what was in the best interests of the pilots? Based on your statements (and @
Derg's), it would seem that you would say that they were. But listening to the pilots would have put them all out on the streets. I can tell you, even though he was sued and spent years giving deposition testimony, my buddy never regretted his decision once. He knew he did what was best for his members. As he should have done.
Representatives should be leaders. Not puppets.