Originally Posted by
Raptor
...The RLA system and bankruptcy process is biased very much against the individual worker/pilot.
Raptor,
You're a breath of fresh air around here, thank you for weighing in. I wish you guys nothing but luck in your ongoing Section 6 effort.
The RLA is onerous to labor at every step until release to self-help. The trouble with any attempt (by either side) to "fix" the RLA is that you could end up with something like S. 1327, the Airline Labor Dispute "Resolution" Act." Go ahead and google it, but you might want about three fingers of Jameson's after you're through reading.
That is what it looks like when "labor risk is off the table." I'm pretty sure the AEI or the Club For Growth have plenty of ideas that would make us nostalgic for the RLA.
The problem of getting ahead has a lot of angles. Right now it's all about getting good direction from the membership; I think the negotiators need to know everything they can about the members' priorities, morale, and awareness of both the contract and the process by which we amend it. The words the MEC chooses are tremendously important. If you act like you peaked academically in high school, then the NMB won't take you seriously.
The NMB is a contest: each side trying to convince the Board that they have been logical and reasonable at every step, and that their counterparts are negotiating in bad faith. The APA forgot that, and it cost them $44 million in fines,
plus the lost years between that brilliant maneuver and their next contract. Timing is everything, the time value of money isn't just a cliche, and the NMB isn't always Santa Claus. If you make it clear from the outset that you are planning for the NMB to force the outcome, you're toast.
As far as "divisions" go, I believe that there is always a noisy minority of the membership that will always vote against any TA; there's no pleasing some people, regardless of the progress we have made since 2007.
We are in an an auspicious position to begin negotiations, and I hope that our outcomes exceed even our abundant potential. We can get to a better place contractually, but we can't afford to pretend that tinpot populism can stand in for strategy.