[QUOTE=Herkflyr;1407489]This is such a general statement that it is hard to oppose. How do you define "completely"? Are you saying that if you personally (and you--and I--are just one of thousands) did not get every little thing that you did wanted, that therefore your union leadership is wanting? If so, then you will be sorely disappointed regardless of the name of your bargaining agency.

Sometimes I am reminded of pilot A who will say, full of conviction, "If concessions are ever needed, just give up pay. Once given up, you can't ever get back work rules, and the IRS still hasn't figured out how to tax a day off."

Then pilot B will immediately chime in and reply "BS! Work rules don't pay the mortage. Work rules don't buy the groceries. Work rules don't get my kid into the better schools, etc. Only pay will. If you have to give something up, give up work rules."

I have heard exact point/counter-point conversations just like this. What is a union to do with a finite pie, but infinite expectations of the membership?[/QUOTE]


Response to the first bolded part: I'm not interested in semantic word games. I'm not "the great communicator." The question I would ask you is, based upon your (and my) limited grasp of what our fellow pilots put in their surveys, were they met in a way that cost the company more money (money for pilots)? My honest answer is: Not appreciably.

Response to the second bolded: In my perspective, the pie slice we recieved cost about what the previous pie slice cost, adjusted for inflation. The ingredients were just shuffled around...Despite what DALPA said it cost them...I'm not seeing it...Are you?

In your heart, and in all honesty, can you say that with this contract, we have benchmarked bankruptcy wages/benefits as the new normal? I believe we have...Huge DALPA strategic error going forward, IMO.

With the benefit of hind sight, do you believe we left money on the table? Lots of it? I do.

I can live with the contract that 68% voted for, but trying to blow sunshine is BS. We agreed to extend a concessionary contract (with some concessions added/ and some removed) for the addition of a narrowbody, which I believe was coming anyway. In the process, we have accepted bankruptcy wages as normal.

Someone asked in a later post if someone thought DALPA lied to them...I do. On this board, someone posted AF/KLM's contract synopsis after doing a google search...DALPA said they couldn't post those numbers for comparison because they were confidential... Where I come from, that's called lying. And I get to pay them 1.9% of my pay for that kind of effort on my behalf...