Originally Posted by
Sink r8
Let's not forget your strike. We were all proud of you, no doubt about it. Except you shouldn't factor out luck. It was explained to me by a North pilot you didn't strike so much as got locked-out, and the company was pre-packaged for sale (Pacific to AMR, I think it was). Planes were getting mothballed. The White House stepped in to let it be known the Pacific authorities were not going to get transferred, and threw some other big rock in management's puddle, and that was that.
Whatever north pilot told you that was incorrect. Company was not "pre-packaged" for sale. The strike issue was the B scale. Management would not budge, and neither would we. Bill Clinton's administration threatened both sides after the 2 week point of the strike. The threat against the pilots was to invoke a PEB which (it was thought at the time) would break the strikes momentum by forcing a return to work for 60 days. The threat against management was to block new Pacific route authority that management was seeking. The threats brought both sides back to the table. The result was a fix to the huge stumbling block of the B scale. Management moved from the B scale remaining, to a 3 year phase out of the B scale. And just like that, the strike was settled.
Carl