Wouldn't ALPA actually make one's resume look worse? Since someone is willing to help out a union which actively works against management at times, where is the incentive for a major airline to hire said person? I'm not sure that I would want to list that in the volunteer section of airline apps.
Anyhow, I am very interested in the safety/NTSB aspect of ALPA.
#triggered
incoming huge rant cause that's my thing, I guess..
I wouldn't say we "actively work against management". There are certainly committees that have a more adversarial role, such as negotiating, but I have to definitely say that "actively working against management" is an (unintentional) mischaracterization of what most ALPA volunteers do. Even the negotiating committee... well they're just doing their job and hopefully can achieve something both the pilots and management can live with.
But my three committees I am involved with... which is not what I was trying to do, but um, small airline with high turnover, once people figure out you're willing to volunteer your time it's hard not to get sucked in.. I'll just give you a day in the life.
CIRP... Critical Incident Response Program. We are trying to make sure pilots that have had a major event stay safe, happy, and healthy. This saves the company a bunch of money on an ERP/mental health professionals that pilots /absolutely will not use anyway/. We definitely are not replacements, but pilots won't go see a therapist or counselor and they aren't going to be useful when a pilot is really having trouble reliving an accident over and over in their head. So we provide the only thing that is actually going to help them, at zero cost to the company, and there is data backing up that CIRP program avoids sick calls and other employee problems that can often crop up after an accident. Especially at the regional level, if we were to have an accident we would have allllll kinds of ALPA national support with CIRP teams from other airlines because realistically we are too small to have enough for something really major, and I think most pilots would say that's really valuable. CIRP has also consulted for non-ALPA entities when they've had airplane accidents... just having this structure in place means that people are available. It's not just about helping ALPA people.
Pairing Analysis/Scheduling... I chair this now, so I just had a friendly meeting with management. I again don't see our role as adversarial at all... the company wants efficient pairings as much as we do because they're cheap. Having us sit in a hotel for 30 hours is not more cheap or efficient for them.... nor is a 4 hr SFO sit. However, they also need to build a certain amount of commutable trips, etc, because they can't make money if the pilots can't show up on time, they end up burning reserves, etc.. there's a really fine balance and I don't see any reason why we can't give suggestions to the company and get a few more ideas and sets of eyes on how things are. If we have a terribly crappy fatiguing CDO with issues, maybe we suggest it become a 30 hr overnight to the company and yeah it'll cost them a little more but they might be willing to do it because we don't complain too much about the other crappy redeyes that could be built less efficiently at a higher cost. Give and take on everything, but 85% of our goals are in alignment.
ERC/ASAP.... this is the only one I do that can be a little more adversarial, but still, not really? Pilot screws up, pilot puts in report, if the issue is something management needs to fix... well.. then it's something management needs to fix, even if it costs money, if the risk assessment is there. Sometimes ASAP is gonna reveal a dispatch or maintenance or other issue. But still, this is a collaborative process between the company, the FAA and the union... I'm there to represent the pilot's side, so yea the FAA or company may have a different take. If the pilot did screw the pooch bad enough, now we can step in and try and address it with the pilot, protecting their cert but keeping the company and FAA's hands clean.
Once I can find volunteers to train up as my replacement I'm gonna try to draw down to just two committees (ASAP/CIRP) since I find the safety stuff more exciting than endless Excel spreadsheets, but unfortunately that's kind of how this ends up working out as a small company where you offer to help and then everybody leaves and you're stuck holding the bag. I still fly a full line so that's all I really care about, I'm not interested in doing anything that takes me away from line flying. I can't speak highly enough of ALPA/ALPA national though, everybody should have a chance to do something w/ ALPA at their regional and it gives me a better idea of what I might want to do at mainline and how important these programs are. Also, you get some idea of where your dues actually go, so that's nice.
