Building on this discussion of recourse or long term protections for a breech of faith in the program, what would that legal recourse be? (if it can be said).
There are a few things with this answer. I want to make clear that these are legal and overall resources a union has that individual groups like SAPA don't have.
First, you actually don't want to close the program if the FAA gets out of line. When we had issues with the FAA, calls were made to high ups in the FAA (one time the actual Administrator). I know other ALPA Carriers were able to have that similar type of access to the high ups in the FAA when they have had issues with their POI or designee with the program. Does SAPA or other third parties have that access? Also, you need someone to call to ask, 'this is going on with the ASAP and/or FOQA Program, is that ok'? You can't call 1-800-Lawyers to make that happen.
Secondly, if you draw down the program, as a third party, you need to have your pilots protected. So an educational campaign on 'what to do', legal resources in place to fight violations through the appeals processes ($$$$$), a media campaign to educate the flying public on what is going on (if SAPA (or another nonunion) wanted to do a media campaign against Skywest (or other non-unionized airline) for hypothetically violating the ASAP Program, talking to the media is probably against the 'employee handbook policies', with ALPA, the ALPA President can do the talking and no one at the carrier he is talking about would be threatened), inform the code share partners what is going on, let the insurance companies know that the ASAP Program is being drawn down (airlines get a huge discounts for these programs), and a bunch of other things need to happen to do it right to make sure the pilots are protected.
Thirdly, with the way ALPA (and even the Teamsters) is set up, individual airline branches of that union have to answer to the national structure. Someone at RAH correct me if I am wrong, but about a year ago, the local council that represented the Republic Pilots pulled out of the ASAP Program basically because the head of that local council was fired for 'training purposes'. Teamsters National stepped in and said 'no way the program isn't going to be used as a bargaining chip like this'. So, at times, even the third party needs to have a higher level of accountability. Where is the higher level of accountability with SAPA or other third party groups?
Once again, it is all encompassing. There needs to be accountability from the three groups and even within the groups. To obtain this accountability, you need legal expertise, resources and money to make this happen. Unions have that.
