Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
True ... and because of the wording of the survey it was all the opening needed to "constructively engage" a scope carve out to be relevant at the bargaining table.
Kind of like a day with a deferred APU and the cabin at 100 degrees. If you ask passengers what they want they will say "cool down the cabin." If you asked, "would you like us to remove half the wing bolts to fix the APU ?" then the answer would be "NO!"
Substantively, C12 TA is driven by scope concerns. It removes any pretense of DCI being anything other than an alter ego for Delta Air Lines. But, it is balanced better than anything yet written. Frankly, I am very glad our MEC kept the line at 76 seats. That was not easy work.
There are some real gains here. We may not have a big headline number, but our steady progress has put us at the top of our legacy peer group by a sizable margin. I also think there is a good possibility that traditional Section 6 would not get us nearly as good a deal. There are a lot of variables in Section 6 and thus far UCAL, US Air, and American are not holding up their end of the house.
Continental, Virgin America, Jet Blue, Allegiant, Spirit, FedEx, UPS, Southwest... where is their armada of 76 seaters? You won't find any tidbits about that in the NN. That's a big part of the reason United is still locked in a battle to get a TA. That's a big reason AA never got a contract done. They can't keep us in negotiations forever and those groups will eventually get a contract. 70 more sounds like no big deal but we are setting a precedent here. This contract is bigger than a little 3 year deal, this contract will dictate how all future negotiations will go. We allowed 50+ seaters, that was a mistake and we all know that. Bankruptcy was the excuse. Thankfully we at least have a
hard limit, we should not concede that! You can be competitive and not outsource those aircraft.
This is a concession as it is a net increase in relevant outsourced aircraft, scoping out 50 seaters at this point is about as relevant as scoping out helicopters. I can not get past the scope concession to even begin to evaluate the rest of the contract. If we had 100% raises I'd still be stuck on section 1, though from what I saw I'm not real thrilled with the rest of the agreement either. You guys need to snap out of it and realize we're not yet defeated in this area. If we vote this in, however, it's over.
In my opinion our MEC failed to represent us and this should have never gone to memrat. I'm pretty confident, if surveyed, the pilot group would overwhelmingly object to more large RJ's. Will we be able to stay steadfast to that sentiment in the haze of this propaganda? We're about to find out and A4A is keenly interested and watching closely.
We need to defend our brand, we need to defend our profession. The burden now falls upon us, the line slug, to vote this down and recall our leadership. If we allow 70 more in relatively prosperous times we're sending a message that we will only allow more in the future. This is OUR Delta way more than it's Richard Anderson's Delta. Let's send the message loud and clear that we won't allow anymore scope concessions. Maybe then we can eventually negotiate a contract we can be satisfied with.