Originally Posted by
tsquare
That's fine. My position still stands. He goes out of his way, time after time to point out that dALPA has never voted no on anything (which isn't true btw... but that is an inconvenient little truth). His entire mantra for a long time has been one of voting down "the first offer" or "what management gives us". And here he goes again. AirTran were idiots for not taking SWA's oh-so-generous first offer, and we never do it? ANd yes you can draw parallels, because the leverage of which he speaks has to have a method of implementation... and just what would that be in this day and age?
So I'll ax you GG. Which is a better tack? It really is the crux of this discussion, and it has come into light over and over and over, and will probably continue to do so until Caplinger crawls back under whatever rock he came from.
This is the question: Do you want to continually swing for the fences, and say no to everything until you finally win, or would you rather take small incremental bites until you get there?
And I don't think you can make the case that such an argument isn't backed up by math when we're really not completely in the know on the math. Voting yes or no on these things has emotion and math on both sides unless their on the extreme end of either.
One is a decision based on emotion, the other on math.
Honest question, and I'll try to give you an honest answer. Taking into consideration a lot of what I hear is hearsay and rumor, with a good dose of "I think I remember DALPA telling me blah blah blah."
I voted no on the TA. It seemed to me there were a lot reasons for voting no, and not as many for voting yes. Without going into all that too much, I'll say it wouldn't have taken "swinging for the fences" to have gotten a yes vote from me. I wanted, but didn't expect restoration. I didn't want, but did give, concessions. That's a huge thing to me: giving concessions after pilots gave up huge amounts of pay and work rules. I also wasn't going to vote yes because of the argument "if you don't vote yes, it'll be a couple of years before we get anything." I might have been intimidated by that statement if it wasn't preceded a week earlier with "they came to us early." Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to hear all this...water under the bridge, but I state it to give my mindset which is I don't think it's swinging for the fences to think you can get a little bit more when you have some weight on your side. And I thought we had some decent heft the last go around. To me, it's not a choice between swinging for the fences or taking small incremental bites. To me it's taking small incremental bites, or taking a mouthful that is satisfying...not gluttonous, but satisfying. Had all the LEC reps voted in favor for the TA I'd personally take that as a better indicator of such a bite. So put me down for bites...bites that are respectful of what we deserve; bites that back up the talk about how much we're appreciated in the company emails we get; bites that back up the pay MEC & LEC reps are making for their work; that don't require such a heavy, one-sided sell job and can stand on their own; that deserve a solid YES vote instead of a "well, I guess that's all we're going to get; maybe we'll do better next time around." So I don't think it has to be a home run to get a yes vote, but it has to be more than what you'd think of as in the ballpark of "the minimal", right?
And I don't think one can argue that because they voted one way that the math justifies their decision. There's so much smoke and mirrors in the entire process on all sides, and from what I could tell we're not privy to most of it. There's math and emotion on both sides of the argument. For example, I think you'd find it hard to argue the math says DALPA got all it could on the TA and it was an impossibility to get the exact same TA except 8.4.5.5, vs 8.4.3.3.