Originally Posted by
Tomcat
Thanks ACL for posting the Officer's report. Good synopsis of the meeting. I'm glad that I went, although the information that was covered was mostly items we've discussed here.
Ran into some of the APC team in the meeting. They were easy to pick out at the first break, beacause only a handful of us were walking around using the hand signals that TImbo suggested.
Understandably there is a great deal of angst floating around in the pilot group. The last decade or more has been brutal to the pilot group. Having said that, I believe our Reps are doing a good job of soliciting our input and are being responsive to us. I believe we will see a TA very soon and it will stand or fail on its own merits. If we wind up in traditional Section 6, then we're where we would be anyway. If the TA passes, it's because it met most of our requirements. The Union knows where the pilot group stands and so does the company.
Think of it this way, this is an "opportunity" for the us and the company to further seperate ourselves from the competition. We are pulling away from our competitors and this would allow us to continue to increase that lead. If the company presents a substandard proposal, it's a lost opportunity for the company and could cause more difficulties within DALPA. I fully believe that this is not what our management team wants, and would not be characteristic of group that is know in the industry to be thinking out of the box.
This contract is huge for many of us. Personally, I'm in a demographic that will be enormously and immediately effected by what we do with regard to scope. This may be huge to us, but a perception I have that was strengthened in the meeting is that this is a housekeeping item for the company. The company is trying to get everything in order for a couple of moves that are so far over the horizon that only a couple of us are really able to start connecting the dots. This contract is a small dot along that trajectory.
Personally, I'm taking a deep breath, waiting for the TA and judge in it's entirety.
TC
Wish I could have been there too TC. But I take issue with what I've bolded above and would ask you to consider this carefully. There is such a thing as a poison pill in a contract. You may have struck the best deal in the world for selling your home...way above market price with a quick closing while the new owners give you all the time you wish to move out. You even get to come back anytime you want for visits. But there's one teeny little sentence in there...just one. It says that you still have to pay the mortgage for the new owners. Now the totality of the agreement is incredible - but how about that one little sentence?
Delta's C2K contract looked good in its totalilty at the time. But there WAS a poison pill in it whereby more large RJ's were accepted. That single provision allowed for furloughing thousands of our brother pilots while the regionals hired thousands.
I know this will sound hard headed by me, but no matter how good this TA ends up looking (and it already is concessionary), all that good is nullified if we allow more 76 seat jets to be flown by non-Delta pilots. That is our poison pill. If we send the TA back to the negotiating committee with a single note saying: "We're fine with this except remove the allowance of any more 76 seaters"...and the company turns us down flat and walks away, you'll understand EXACTLY what management's plan was. If you vote to allow it, you'll soon learn EXACTLY what management's plan is.
Carl - the hard head.