Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Negotiations are always about power and leverage. Nothing more and nothing less. You only need look at the history of Delta contract negotiations to understand that. When one side or the other has power and leverage they always overreach. The result is a never ending up and down cycle between management and employees.
Originally Posted by
tomgoodman
Threatening to pull some kind of "trigger" is a very traditional negotiating tactic by both sides. Sometimes they really mean it, and in those rare cases would be doing you no favor by keeping their plan secret. Usually it's a bluff, and that is also an allowable tactic (provided that the "gun" is a legal one). Frank Borman justified his concessionary agreement at EAL by saying "We had a gun to our head." Translation: "We caved."
Without threats, contract negotiations are just friendly discussions.
I agree with both of you on the principle of how all is fair in negotiations. But, it seems to me that this (SLI negotiations) is a little different.
It's one thing to have two equal parties (SWA pilots vs. AT pilots) negotiate, push, pull and tug for seniority, but it seems that when management comes in and takes the side of one party over the other and threatens the other with walking papers, that good faith has left the table.
When DAL merged with NWA, to their credit, I never got the sense that Delta management sided with anyone. My impression was that they kind of let us go to our area and work things out on our own. From what I have seen, this seems to be the way most airline merger SLI negotiations go -- management stays out of it.
The rumor I have heard is that if the AT pilots don't take the "deal," SWA will leave Air Tran as a separate company and slowly sell off its assets. The trigger of "firing" the dissenters seems to be a bit unreasonable to me and I doubt it Mccaskill/Bond had that in mind when the legislation was passed.