Originally Posted by
LeineLodge
For me it just boils down to we are where we are, not where we want to be.
Well okay... But that seems to me like a pretty ineffective way of looking at it. If you lost 42% in an investment, and 10 years later you were still 34% down (which means you still need 51% to get back to even), would you think you'd made "significant progress" toward recovering the lost value of the investment? Would it boil down to you are where you are and not where you want to be? Or would you consider that maybe what you've been doing isn't working?
Originally Posted by
LeineLodge
I'll take your numbers at face value, since I've never done the buying power calculations that you clearly have. Of course I would like that 34% to be smaller - wouldn't we all? Where we again differ is that I believe that number would actually be larger (ie still stuck on JPWA rates) if we had gone the traditional route and taken 2-5 years to achieve a Section 6 contract.
I doubt they'd be much smaller, if any. But even if they were... would you rather the numbers be where they are now and give up on the idea of restoration? Or would you rather see at least some effort to try and recover what was lost? What we have now is clearly not an effort to restore our profession and our careers. It's an effort to get "the most we can at every opportunity"... as defined and judged by the MEC without much regard for what the pilots they represent think. And that definition they're using is clearly much lower than restoration. The thing that really makes it bad is that we've set expectations and set the tone that we're pretty happy with our progress and that we do not expect anything like restoration going forward. That Lee Moak interview in Bloomberg/Business Week is a perfect example of what I'm talking about!
Originally Posted by
LeineLodge
The LOA's along the way are even better because they clear the way for a more streamlined conversation when we get back to Section 6 in April. That conversation can now be essentially "now that the recovery has actually taken place, and Delta is solid financially, we expect to share in the success." I don't believe that conversation would/could have been taken seriously in spring/summer of 2012. April 2015? You betcha.
I truly hope I'm wrong, but I don't think that "conversation" (if it even takes place) will be taken seriously in 2015 either. Reference RA's quote about labor unrest being off the table and, again, Lee Moak's quotes in the Bloomberg/Business Week article. We have no credibility in terms of asking for restoration. We have a 10 year long track record demonstrating that we don't expect anything of the sort.
Originally Posted by
LeineLodge
Also, fwiw framing the conversation in terms of "getting back what we gave up," "lack of respect" or "restoration" is not likely to yield success. The only people on the planet that give 2 hoots about that are the Delta pilots. If we want to move the rock up the hill, we have to work within the framework that exists, and deal with things as they are, not as we want them to be.
A more appropriate argument IMO is to be compensated commensurate with the financial success that we enable 24/7/365, through our safety, professionalism, and yes, labor peace. To get to where we want to be, we need to put forth an argument as to why we warrant a (large, using your numbers) premium over the rest of the industry.
I don't think you can put forth an argument for the kinds of improvements it would require for restoration without including the context of where we were and where we are now. Otherwise, it just sounds completely unreasonable.
So I don't see how you can have it both ways. Either your objective is restoration, which means very large, what would normally be considered "unreasonable" increases to recover from the
unreasonable cuts we took. Or you consider those
unreasonable cuts to in fact be "reasonable" and to have established a new baseline from which we only seek
reasonable improvements. The latter, of course, is where DALPA has been coming from and, by all indications, is continuing to go. And I've seen nothing from DALPA to indicate a change in that paradigm.