Originally Posted by
Rock
I think your first question is a good one. But clearly, at least on this site, a lot of people don't think they bothered to come to the table with anything more than pocket change. I suspect that their offer had something to do with NMB pressure, something to do with hoping to get a little more help during peak, and something to do with the hope that we wouldn't accept their offer and start a new timeline that would extend the 2011CBA another 2 years or so.
Let's say 90% of the pilot group votes no on the TA. Pretty clear message. So what? I don't mean that flippantly. I mean, why would they care? I didn't notice 777 captain seats going unfilled on the last bid. Or any captain seats really. I do notice newhires going to every airplane. Again, if that is our leverage, time is on the company's side. We can't stop them from hiring.
If we have zero leverage, then why not stall forever. We can't strike, so keeping the CBA we have and just continuing the process should have been a win for the company. They finally came to an agreement as the company thought it was in their interest to do so. They presented the minimum they thought they could get away with. Why, if we have no leverage did this happen. We do have leverage and it was getting even better when we blinked.
I agree it will be harder to enjoy this level of leverage in the future. The company is also ensuring this TA enshrines rules to keep this from happening again when the next TA is presented in a decade and is even worse. They fix their Captain problem with the SLB, they can fix their F/O problem at any time by hiring, they can fix their seat manning problems cheaply with bump and flush with small slot denial payments, and they fix their instructor problem with reserve manning sims (however voluntary) as they will just offer 200% to do it and will find takers.
Note that in the MD-11 alone, in July, I heard the company relied on the instructors to fill 183 slots that were unassigned. Imagine how bad the 757/767 pipeline situation is too. Individual actions of instructors would shut down training pipelines and with this TA, that problem is solved.
The company is fox smart in many areas while oddly incompetent in others. This TA keeps us from having leverage in the future.