Union-busters have been advocating this strategy for years...........decades. Bypass the union leadership (its elected purpose) and negotiate directly with pilots. They know their odds of cementing inferior contracts increase substantially when they can manipulate and prey upon the large segment of pilots who aren't involved or knowledgable about their tactics or even the positives and negatives of the issues, especially coupled with those who seek to avoid any risk whatsoever and sign the first offer that's presented to them.

Union leadership making decisions on pilot's behalf is exactly one of the accepted by-products of choosing to unionize in the first place.

If negotiations produces something substantially OTHER then what's been offered, then perhaps APA will have reason to do that. If they did that with what's been presented so far having said what they've said so far, they'd emasculate themselves both with the majority of their own pilots and with management. That is the "rock and a hard place" I said they put themselves in previously. If the present proposal is put out for vote and its voted down, not only are we going to arbitration, but we're screwed as both a cohesive force and a credible threat going forward and that's a hell of a price to pay for letting Jerry dictate how we determine our fate.