Originally Posted by mloub

Boomer,

Sorry you had to go through all that at Comair. It sounds like it was a raw deal. I certainly don't know as much about the comair situation as you do, and your insights are really helpful.

Comair won three rulings against ALPA. One was the injunction that nullified the snapback clause due to kick in on 01/01/07 when Delta failed to meet the fleet guarantee they had promised for the 2005 concessions.

The second was ruling for the company in their 1113c motion to reject the pilot contract and impose their own.

The third was an injunction to prevent ALPA from striking when Comair imposed the 1113c contract, thus violating the status quo. (This one was technically a win for the company, since he postponed the case pending further review and we never actually had the opportunity to test the case law by striking).

Bankruptcy is a sh$t sandwich no matter how you slice it. As I understand it, right off the bat management can accept or reject any contract they had entered into pre-bankrupcty. (No surprise they usually target everyone else's contracts and not their own).

Management can not outright reject a contract, only the judge can do that for them. Prior to 1113c, Management can propose a new contract, and ALPA can accept it or counter-offer. Both sides must negotiate in good faith. When the company doesn't get what they want, they file the 1113c motion and the judge decides which proposal is more justified. I do not know of any case (in aviation, anyway) where the judge decided that a union's proposal offered a better chance than management's for the company to survive.

Once they have rejected a contract, like a pilot group's contract, they then either reach a deal on a new contract (rare! if they coulda reached a deal they would have done it earlier) or take it to the judge in 1113c. The judge's role is to see if he can make all the pieces work by looking at projected revenues, the FA's pay, pilots pay, maintenance, management etc..etc...if there is no way in hell it would work, you get liquidation. In that sense, it is open to debate what the judge looks at when imposing concessions, but I think most people would tell you the judge looks at wages compared to industry averages, and concessions that labor groups have already given, and things along those lines. I guess the issue with Comair was the judge viewed concessions that were due to snap back as not much of a concession.

Delta (Bastian, Glass, Anderson, Bornhorst) testified that Comair's costs were above average and not competitive. A group like Mesa would have a harder time proving that the pilot contract was a factor that led to BK.

If there is a solution to the mess by bringing in new labor contracts, then the judge imposes the labor contracts that he thinks spread the pain around fairly.

Exactly. This is where any good-faith paycuts outside of BK don't count for squat in 1113c, whether they are due to snap-back or not. The pilots need to hurt just like everyone else during BK.