Originally Posted by
newKnow
I think this is probably a. "Which came first: the chicken or egg?" conversation, but I'll answer anyway. From my perspective at the time, which was a freshly bumped DC-9 captain back in the right seat of the 757; our lower pay rates had everything to do with our frozen pension. If I remember correctly, our frozen pension vote came in the fall, while the concessionary contract vote came the next year.
I can tell you that I argued until I was blue in the face with guys with multiple reasons as to why they shouldn't vote for that contract. Almost everyone fell back on the same excuse as to why they would vote for it: they wanted to protect their pensions. IMO, it's the main reason why "we" voted in those lower rates.
So, it's all in how you look at it. I didn't take his statement to imply that we kept the pension because we had lower rates, while it appears that you did. Rather, I thought he was just including the frozen pension as evidence to compare our overall compensation as compared to yours.
I guess we would have to ask him what he meant.
That's the way I remember it too. I believe "safe harbor" was the "goal". So I guess we ended up on the rocks instead, met some Delta guys on the beach with a similar hole in their boat and went looking for a bunker where we had to enter numbers into an old computer to stop earthquakes.
Interesting times....it was a fast moving train and my mind has forgotten details as my life is now better. I guess my point is, it's like a big battle. Afterwards two guys will sit and argue who got shelled worse and who had to fight off more Huns. But, we're here, we're alive, and doing fine.
I wish you guys would quit trying to walk me down memory lane....it wasn't that much fun the first time
Your Uncle Ferd