Originally Posted by
sailingfun
You might as well be done now. Every contract involves some give and take. If we walked in and said zero concessions and here is a list of our demands you would work under this contract for the rest of your career. The NMB would not even bother to ice us like American. They would refuse us even entering the mediation process.
Since there are a lot of newer folks here, it's important to point out this
latest version of pure idiocy and complete falsehood that is sailingfun.
Nothing in the Railway Labor Act (RLA) or in the charter of the National Mediation Board (NMB) requires
concessions to be made. Sailingfun and certain other DALPA operatives who post these pure falsehoods do this frequently around contract time, but it's simply not true. The NMB (under the rules of the RLA) simply require that "negotiations in good faith" take place. Not
concessions, just
compromise. Here's an example:
Company's position is 5% cuts in all sections of contract. Union's position is 15% gains in all sections of contract based on corporate economics. After good faith negotiations, agreement is made to compromise exactly halfway at 5% gains in all sections of the contract. Result is that both sides
compromised, but we didn't make any
concessions. We never went backward in any contractual section.
Since bankruptcy, many of us know nothing else but this relatively new phenomenon of all gains having to be funded by offsetting concessions. That's not the case and is not our history. Bankruptcy is over for us. It's time to return to
compromise...not
concessions. The NMB would absolutely agree. Our problem is that our bargaining agent has been purchased by Delta management. Therefore our union is struggling with how to spin our concessions as good, and our gains as "The World's Greatest Contract." The NMB would be more than willing, but our bargaining agent is not. They've promised labor peace to Delta management.
THAT'S our problem.
Carl