Originally Posted by
Oberon
We have no way of knowing how seriously the company is about valuing labor peace until negotiations start. If the company's opener drops profit sharing and isn't a significant contractual improvement (overall, they will have items the want for efficiency purposes) it will be clear they don't want an early contract and they don't value labor peace. Until that point we can only speculate.
Just a quick comment about "openers" being made public.
Doing that is a recent phenomenon that has been brought about by popular demand. The whole exercise is more about public relations than about negotiations.
There's the actual negotiations and then there's the public "openers".
The two things are nearly unrelated these days.
If either side decides to publish something you can be sure it will be a meaningless document. If you're expecting to see detailed negotiating positions you are going to be deeply disappointed.
ie => DALPA will open for "substantial improvements to pay and benefits".
They're not going to publish numbers.