No, I am not in management. I'm just a line guy who has spent most of my career here holding a ALPA position.

Every contract, every time, I am always amazed at the chest thumping and the gnashing of teeth by the rank and file who have never given one minute to ALPA. You don't like the TA? Then get off your butt and go do something about it next time! I'm sure S.H. (negotiation chair) would be glad to hand it off. You think it's easy? That if we simply just ask for iron clad scope, the company will give it right up! Right...

The LEC/MEC are the guys that WE elected. We chose them to represent us. They went in there and gave it the good fight. They had access to volumes of company data. They had to sign legal form after legal form promising that they would never disclose what they know. In other words, they know things about our companies business plan that you and I will never know.

Now, do you think that all the folks that we elected would sell the farm out from under us? Do you think that if they saw the business plan and it was full of RJ's and a shrinking mainline that they would have just shrugged their shoulders?

If you trust all the folks that we elected to represent us in ALPA, then you have to accept their judgement. If you don't, then go get yourself elected next time. If they say that scope is not THE issue right now, then it isn't. They have seen the companies deepest darkest secrets! They have seen the entire business plan! They know the real truth.

So that is why the new TA focused on getting as much money as we could in exchange for giving the company a little more flexablity. All in all, a pretty easy contract with very few changes. Sure there are several things that I would have like to have seen - another day off per month for reserves, a bump in the 401K, a shorter duration contract - but such is life.

One thing I do believe. In section 6, ALPA is really a toothless dog. We've got no contract, we are past our amendable date - What are we going to do about it? I'll tell you what we are going to do about it - we are going to bend over and take it like a man!!!!
We have no power for years. Then after years of lost wages we might get the oportunity to strike. Yippie... Time value of money. In this industy, make the good wages while you can because rest assured the bad times will return.

Just ask our F/A's. They are coming up on two years past amendable. Two years of lost wages so far and they will be parked for at least another year. So 3 or 4 years later, do you think they have a prayer of actually coming out ahead? Impossible...