Originally Posted by
Flyinrob
I'm on Mil Leave, but still like reading these forums to keep up with whats going on at Delta. I appreciate the different opinions/perspectives people have shared regarding the contract survey. It helped me while filling my own survey out.
When I ask my friends at Delta if they filled out their survey, I get a variety of responses:
"It wont matter"
"Its a Captains union, so they'll just get what they want"
"I sent in my DPA card"
"I filled it out, but didnt understand what most of it meant"
"yeah, I should really do that"
"I got f&*^$% in the SLI" (Basically, the union wont take care of him anyways, so why do it)
"Im just going to see what happens"
These are all responses from different individuals. No one simply said "yes", or was excited about the prospect of a new and better contract. I am surprised that more people aren't engaged at the minimum level of just filling out an online form. Maybe its because i'm relatively new to Delta, but I think filling out the survey is important, even if you don't like the union, or have other issues.
Just my .02
I agree. BTW, thanks for your service.
As to the indifference you've experienced, here's what I think a lot of it is attributable to. When DALPA allowed our pay to be cut by a total of 42% and allowed thousands of our jobs to be outsourced, I think a lot of folks (including myself) lost significant confidence in them. (Yeah, I know, we voted for it. But DALPA pushed it and sold it extremely hard.) Then, when Delta came out of bankruptcy, and DALPA showed no plan or even an expectation for restoration, I think a lot of folks (including myself) lost even more confidence in them. Now, we have gone almost HALF A DECADE and STILL no plan or even expectation for restoration. My confidence in DALPA at this point is basically zero. In fact, my voting reps are so "in the tank" with low expectations that I've completely disengaged from providing input to them.
Now, I submitted my survey very early on in the process. I'm just not one to give up completely... and in the grand scheme of things, the survey just didn't take that much of my time. But I think what you're seeing is a lot of guys who have given up completely and they just don't care anymore. Certainly, some of the fault lies with those individuals. But I attribute the greatest amount of the fault to a lack of direction and inappropriate leadership from DALPA. If DALPA had made our objectives clear from the start (and those objectives didn't include accepting what we have now as a new baseline), I'm 99.99% sure we would be seeing a much higher participation rate in this survey. Anyway, just my "2 cents"...