Originally Posted by
tsquare
Interesting. Did you really look at that chart? I mean really
look at it? In order to get to those pay rates you are so enamored with, you would actually take a $1000+ hit on earnings. Is that what you really want? Look at them again, and tell me where the curves cross where it is worthwhile for us to fold arms akimbo and then get higher rates. You will have to do some research, but you also have to factor in what you will be losing in the private sector investment market. I don't know about you, but up until July, my portfolio was doing rather well. I don't want to lose the increased contributions that I can be making just to make a point. So why is it so important to you to swing for the fence on every pitch? It still makes no sense to me being the investment guy that you are that you still believe swinging for homeruns is the way to go. Barry Bonds is worthless to us. I want Pete Rose.
More money = Time * money * ROR, and even 5% is much much much better than zero. And in case you didn't know, we aren't going to live forever. I don't want to wait for C2K + inflation (which gets bigger and bigger with each passing day that we stand with arms folded waiting for that glorious payday
).
Oh, and I am sure to placate you he could easily run them out to 2050 to show you even more how ludicrous the waiting game would be.
You either don't understand or are intentionally misrepresenting what I have advocated.
I have never said that we should "fold arms" or play a waiting game "swinging for the fences." That's the kind of straw man you and a few others like to build to try and make my position seem extreme and unreasonable.
What I have said (clearly and multiple times) is that we should define our objective as restoring our profession and our careers. Now, that might ruffle some feathers... especially now that we've spent a full decade setting expectations by acting like we're fine with bankruptcy as a reset. But if restoration is the goal, we are extremely unlikely to obtain it (or even anything remotely close to it) if we don't articulate it and don't build our plan around it.
That's the difference between me and Alfa (and I guess you too). I believe restoration is possible. Not easy by any means, but possible. Alfa wrote it off a long time ago as being "unreasonable." He offers proof as being our results to date. Yet we haven't even tried. Of course, this is the point where you will talk about what other pilot groups have tried and accomplished. The thing is, T... those other pilot groups have been in a very different situation than what we've had here at Delta. Our company is by far the most successful and has made the most progress towards restructuring for future success of any of the other formerly bankrupt airlines. Our pilot group has been in a position of leadership among pilot groups in our industry. Yet we've squandered the opportunity and really hamstrung everybody else by in effect accepting bankruptcy as a reset and redefining the value of our profession based on that new baseline. We're hanging our hat on "pattern bargaining" and then setting a low bar for everyone else to pattern off of.
I realize you're going to argue with me til the cows come home. I don't understand why, but then again I don't have to understand and, honestly, I don't really care. Maybe you're far enough along in your career that you don't want to rock the boat. Management will fight tooth and nail to prevent the kind of pilot cost increases that restoration would involve. They thought they had that dragon slayed a long time ago, never to be revisited. Maybe you don't really care that much about this profession and you just don't want to rock the boat so you can coast on in to retirement. I can understand the thought process there. We all have to do what we think best for ourselves and our families. I just have a hard time understanding how someone (especially someone who should know better) could think what we do is so much less valuable today than it was for decades.
I get it with Alfa. He's strictly a numbers guy... a bean counter. If it can't be quantified, it doesn't exist. If guys who thought like that had been in charge in the 1960's, we certainly never would have gone to the moon. I guess maybe you're more like Alfa than me.