Originally Posted by Baron50

One point that you are missing and that the 2003 MEC ignored is that the BK judge's jurisdiction only existed until the company exited BK. Therefore, it was highly improbable that the judge could have mandated a labor contract duration beyond that point unless we agreed. The argument was, that if the labor contract was amendable on BK exit, the greedy Wall Street bankers would balk at lending the money to exit. So the majority MEC not only sold out the contract, but also ensured that the concessions would be permanent.

It was likely that if the management's contract had been imposed it would have been so egregious that even the concessionist would have developed a back bone to fix it. That in fact was the case in 2007, although on a smaller scale. The Flight Attendants proved the point and did not suffer the damage that was self inflicted by the pilots.

The primary reason that UAL pilots gave up 60 years of hard won contractual improvements (twice) was simple fear. No matter how hard a few people tried to explain that the risk of letting the Judge decide by just saying NO was minimal, it was to no avail. The pilots could not hear the message because of the noise of their knees chattering. The specter of losing their jobs and having to start over, a la EAL, PAA, was too much for them to contemplate. This is a generation that is risk adverse. They never wanted to understand intrinsic value of the frequent flyer program and the overall corporate strategy of strategic bankruptcy, primarily to dump defined benefit pensions. Just look at Wall Street and the talking heads plant the idea that AMR must go bankrupt to get rid of the pensions.

The MEC was guilty of poor leadership, but ALPA staff was also complicit in scaring the membership to vote for the BK contract because it served their purposes. Their jobs would have been threatened if UAL went CH7, so even if the actual threat was minimal there was no point in taking any chances, at least in their minds.