Originally Posted by fly2002

Hi tsquare,
I'll try to respond as best as I can. I agree almost entirely with the first part of your post. There are a lot of factors working against the piloting profession, but falling for the same tricks again and again is intolerable. Simply put, negotiating further scope erosion given our current financial climate would be extremely short sighted. In fact a disaster. Delta has, in it's 80+ year history never made more money, and during this time we sell more delta pilot jobs?

I've been an ALPA negotiator myself and have a little over 2 years experience on ALPA's board of directors. From my vantage point,as an outsider of course, it looks like the negotiating committee is being out maneuvered rhetorically. Ill try my best to explain. The company is presenting a very smart proposal on their end. Their smart enough to realize that they can use short term greed to get what they want in the end. They have a master plan and our negotiators SHOULD have known what they were after.

Its like chess....you look multiple moves down the road and your thinking of what your opponent will do.....you already know your own reaction to what their move will be. Their goal is to outsource everything under the sun and have low pilot pay. So ask yourself....how would you do that if you were the manager?

If I was on the other side of the table I would offer a pay raise and a small scope concession. Offer a good raise! Cloud their judgement. I need to get as close as I can on scope to those Boeing 737's and A-320's. I'll sell them on the "ratio" factor for now....I'll use the numbers to lie and mask my true intentions. They'll also feel like good employees for "helping" me get rid of those pesky 50 seaters. What those pilots don't realize is that they've sold, yet again something that they'll never have the power to recapture...scope...their own jobs. In turn I've given them something that blows like the wind.....a pay rate. Unlike the pilots, I'm looking 15-20 years down the road. These chumps are just looking at the next 5 years tops! Once things go south financially in 2018 I can take back that pay rate and I will have achieved everything I wanted. In fact what I'm really after is their queen.....those 737's and A320's. Once I have that it will represent over 80% of the total airline. It's only a matter of time until checkmate. Times become tough....I simply lock out the 777 pilots who are too small in number to defend themselves and I hire easy replacements =Checkmate

Tsquare....I'm long winded but that's what our negotiators should have seen sitting down at the table. In fact they should be smart enough to realize the exact opposite is what we need. Scope has to come first. No scope no power. If ALPA was truly interested in restoring pay they would realize that scope has to come first, but they've created their own monster because now they can't do that. IE dual representation conflict and now mainline pilots that want instant gratification. What would the pilots say to no raises for 10 years because we have to undo all off your past screw ups? Wouldn't go well for the representation.

Ok t square. There it is.