Originally Posted by
DAL 88 Driver
Our company is in much better financial shape than theirs and arguably has a better outlook for profits going forward. In almost 10 years, we've restored the 14% pay cut we took with an 1113 gun to our heads in bankruptcy and allowed the 32.5% pay cut we took prior to bankruptcy to stand.
With that kind of bar set by the pilot group that is supposedly leading the profession out of the abyss, why would you expect them to be able to exceed our rates?
If pattern bargaining is alive and well... based on our performance in an environment of extreme profits, we're screwed (and probably so is everybody else).
Why would I expect them to exceed our rates? Because if the bar we set was so abysmally low, I would of thought that other unions, especially independent ones, would never have settled for less. Heck, they went years without achieving restoration. Why not continue that battle? If pattern bargaining is not alive and well, they should have been able to far exceed what we have and yet they cannot even equal it.
I believe I'm a reasonable man. On the one hand I want restoration just as much as you and any one of us does and on the other is the NMB. Where I differ from you (I think) is I believe the NMB (via the RLA) is the single biggest hurdle to reaching that goal in a reasonable amount of time. IMO, if others cannot exceed our hourly wage, it makes it even more difficult for us to achieve significant gains because of the route we have to take thru the NMB. Do you believe the NMB would allow us, with the highest hourly wage of the legacies, to strike if we do not get a 32 percent hike in pay on top of that?
Our company is doing phenomenally well and I do believe significant gains are to be had but they have been made much more difficult to achieve by the lack of gains on top of ours by unions at other passenger carriers.
Denny