Originally Posted by
jsled
And then there was the NWA/DAL decision of 2008, where the arbitrators (including Eischen) rejected the NWA/Katz proposal and went with the more reasonable DAL/Freund proposal.....
This may surprise you, especially if you haven't read the NWA/DAL arbitration, which I suspect you haven't (at least in its entirety). I took that quote from George Nicolau . . .
. . . that the objective is to make each case fair and equitable; that the proposals advanced by those in contest rarely meet that standard
. . . originally stated in the 1990 FedEx/Flying Tigers arbitration, from the text of that same 2008 NWA/Delta arbitration. Arbitrator Bloch, withe concurrence of Arbitrators Eischen and Horowitz, used Nicolau's to explain why they were
not adopting
either the Delta or the Northwest pilots' proposals.
If you'll take time to read the first 32 pages of that arbitration, you'll find that the NWA proposal was not "rejected," nor did the panel "go with" the Delta proposal. They rejected some arguments of both sides, accepted others, and then made their own--in crafting a "fair and equitable list."
Unlike baseball arbitrations, of which Arbitrator Nicolau has been a party to many, the panel is not stuck with one side's proposal or the other's.
I'm looking for a repeat...actually a three-peat (see Us Airways) of Freund over Katz.
I would suspect that, when this is all over, the consensus will be that neither counselor, Freunde nor Katz, will be considered the "winner," but instead that the pilots of both sides will have their share of results to commiserate. Then, some 20 years down the road, those same pilots will look back at this arbitration and marvel at how well the arbitrators ruled.