^^^^Opinion.
I stand by my vote and still feel it was a sufficient deal at the time. The rest of the industry has followed us up, and in the case of AA exceeded us in payrates.
My W2 is up significantly due to a number of improvements made in 2012. I would imagine yours is too.
Call it cost neutral, self funded, whatever you want. Our pie is a lot bigger than it was pre 2012. There is no debate about that.
If you were sold anything, I suggest you do your own analysis the next time around. I'm perfectly happy accepting all information and forming my own opinion.
Again this is all opinion. You state these bullets as fact, especially 717's and leaving $ on the table. It is an unprovable argument since it didn't work out that way. You can repeat it all you want, but the fact is we will never know.
I could just as easily sit here and say if we had voted no to C2012 that we would be slogging in mediation, UAL/AA/US would still trail us miserably and we would not have 717's on the ramp. Probably not exactly how it would have played out, but how can we ever know?
I do know that since C2012 was ratified our rates are up ~20% and we've been getting it along the way. One could argue that if we had voted no and Richard called the bluff that we really would have left $ on the table instead of having it in my bank account and DPSP plan...back to that whole unprovable argument.
Now we're back a mere 3 years later for another round instead of possibly just finishing the last deal. Our industry peer comparisons are much tighter this round, favoring the upward patterning we all expect in this environment. I'm optimistic we will get a good deal and have great faith in the team that was appointed by our democratically elected reps. All 3 are very solid individuals, and I have no doubt they are in there attempting to extract as much value for you and me as they can.