I see how that could be read either way. Even a Dubinsky style letter admits that the more golden eggs there are, the more we can choke out.

Its written by a ladder climbing politician and vetted by lawyers prior to consumption by the line swine, so its intentionally ambiguous. I could put an anti-Moak hat on and crucify him over it, or a pro-Moak hat and defend what he said, and spin it to be either pro or anti labor.

One tried and true management trick is to box labor into the "pie is only so big" frame of mind, and then let us fight over "our piece". While there technically is some truth to that (we just can't get a billion dollars per hour because the company would liquidate on DOS) the general problem with that line of thinking is that it usually tries to frame the debate with too small a slice of pie to begin with, and then turns labor loose on itself to divvy up (junior versus senior, domestic versus international, captain versus FO, line holder versus reserve, etc) which is highly distracting as well as reduces unity, so its a double win (for management) if we fall for it.

I have no desire to defend Moak at all, and am very suspiscious of him both now and in the future for when he "leaves to spend more time with his family" or whatever the press release will say, and then ends up even higher up the ladder, which we all know he will. But you could take what he said and spin it to mean the whole pie is massively bigger than before, so whatever piece we get is going to be bigger in proportion. I'd like that, but I'm not convinced that's what he really meant. There's enough wiggle room in what he said though that it could be.

He also may be trying to say that we're pretty much there, and perhaps he's validating the "bankruptcy reset" mentality. I don't like that at all.

In any case, Donatelli has the ball and its his huddle. Even if Moak is calling bad plays from the sidelines, he can always turn his headset down and call an audible. ALPA can't afford to lose DAL or UAL. We are their largest "customers" and they need to keep us relatively happy. We'll only tolerate a "train of abuses" so long before one of the two seeks to form a more perfect Union, at which time the wheels will come off the gravy train.

Whatever he meant, perhaps we should seek clarification and specifics. We've had enough political grandstanding and 30 second ads where someone stands up there saying "I'm for things that are good, and I'm against things that are bad!" to thunderous applause. Recall or not, we need to massively up our participation. Even Dubinsky couldn't achieve anything without high levels of unity and participation.