Carl,

Thanks for making my point about costing.

You are letting emotion to interfere with your higher order reasoning processes. Of course management ultimately determines the upper bound for their largest cost expenditure. That is why they are there. If we determined that for them we wouldn't be in business very long. I want to make $500 an hour! If I could get us all to agree with that figure, according to you we would establish that rate. This assuming the NMB would sign off on such a thing, which they wouldn't. They are cognizant of how business works.

We may move the upper bound to a point, that is what negotiations are for. Believe it or not, there is a limit where management cannot go past. They determine that limit and negotiate to stay as far under it as possible.