Originally Posted by
Alan Shore
Unfortunately, you're back to making statements of fact of which you have no personal knowledge. I believe just as strongly as you do that this was in fact what our NC passed across the table as our opener, and that specifics were added to each section as time went on. It is my understanding that specifics on value pieces such as pay are not exchanged until the end game.
Tell you what -- let's both run for NC the next time around. Then we'll both know for sure.
It's just not correct Alan. I have personal knowledge of this. In Section 6 negotiations, you are held to account every step of the way for bad faith negotiations. Specifically, you cannot say later in negotiations that you now want a 50% pay raise even though you initially asked for only 25%. Conversely, management can't later say they want 50% pay cuts even though they only asked for a 25% pay cut initially. This can be tried occasionally when one side feels they have a leverage advantage in a strike, but you'll quickly get slapped by the NMB who will remind you that going backward from your opener is bad faith negotiations. Without a detailed opener, you'd never know that. It's why openers are a detailed exposition of what you want as the final contract.
By the MEC claiming that all openers are conceptual (a flat out lie), they get to hide from the question of exactly what we are asking for. Did we ask for 35 additional 76 seat RJ's to be flown by non-Delta pilots and settle for 70 additional? Did we ask pay increases of 5/9/4/4 and settle on 4/8/3/3? We'll never know because the MEC has decided they will never release the opener to the pilots. FWIW before Delta, I've always received a detailed report of our opening position section by section as soon as it was exchanged with management. You knew exactly what we were asking for.
Carl