Originally Posted by
Whidbey
Is it your position that AA management would have been happy to come to the table with a reasonable offer four years ago had APA been more "proactively engaged"? Your statment seems to imply that the negotiating methods of the APA are wholly are largely to blame for the lack of progress at AA.
I don't think it's valid to point to the slow pace in the AA negotiations as a failure of their union. The delay tactic given to management by the RLA was going to be used as long as it worked to the advantage of AA management, adversarial relationship or no.
Nope, not my position at all. Let's look at the results for comparison:
July 21, 2006
APA sends Section 6 notice.
APA: 52% raise, improvements to all sections of the contract
AMR: productivity gains, small improvements to some sections of the contract.
JULY 22, 2011
APA result: No contractual changes
AMR result: No pilot cost increases.
That's 5 years of negotiation. Did AMR's strategy work? Did APA's strategy work? What has the APA "fought through"?
Delta and NWA pilots negotiated during this same time frame. The results have been different. Hawaiian, AirTran, Alaska, and Spirit have negotiated during this time period. Spirit was even released to strike. What were the results?