Originally Posted by
Pullout
When did we have to take contract concessions? They forgot to deduct from mine I guess. And it's not a conspirators theory to know that Mesa gets business by grossly underbidding our competitors. How are we able to do this? That's right, we work for a fraction of what others do. But when we have people like you vowing to vote 'yes' if they throw an extra quarter your way, how could we lose!? Quit being shortsighted. We're being whipsawed against each other and legacy management is winning. We're subsidizing their multi billion dollar yearly profit. But please, take your shiny new quarter and feel proud. You seem to have animosity toward me but I think it's deeper than that. It may come from the fact you know I just might be right...wear your ten year pin with pride buddy.
I have never seen a rejected
regional TA do anything other than cost the pilot group more money in the long-run, and benefit other pilot groups with less spine. A rejected TA immediately resets the foot-dragging by management teams who are not afraid of the NMB or ALPA at all. How many regionals have been released to self-help within 5-10 years of rejecting a TA? How many legacies have simply shifted around flying when a group rejected marginal increases in pay?
Do you know who benefitted most from Envoy's stand for justice? It wasn't the Envoy pilots, it wasn't all regional pilots, it was PSA & Piedmont. Unless there is a national seniority list, an ALPA national regime bold enough to reject any regional TA that lowers the bar, or an NMB that actually releases regional pilot groups to strike ever, then it is patently stupid to reject any TA. In such a broken, dysfunctional, uncoordinated quagmire of regional pilot groups, rejecting a TA simply incentivizes other pilot groups to take concessions and thus lowers the bar even further!!!
Is Republic back at the table with RAH's union, begging for a second chance to give them a raise? No. How did the Envoy stand for justice work out? It sure as heck didn't end up "raising the bar."
Back up your positions with historical data on the financial and career outcomes of rejected TAs at regional 121 carriers since the 1980s and I'll consider your position. I think you'll see that making a stand at the regional level never works out. Regional feed is, by design, set up to be fragmented and distributed among lowest-bidders, with contract durations on RFPs overlapped to provide maximum "ratchet-down" capability.
Lastly, if you want to devote your backbone and indignation towards something that would actually raise the bar, start a petition of all regional unions to pressure their MECs into a national Memorandum of Understanding--a binding agreement that no MEC of any US 121 airline will ever sign off on a TA with payrates below specified amounts (with inflation adjustments included).
Spend your time and emotions arguing for something that could actually raise the bar. Rejecting a TA at Mesa isn't going to.