[php]NEGOTIATING UPDATE
It has been quite some time since I last communicated with you. Since last fall, my team and I have spent most of our time flying the line and decompressing from the stresses of negotiating our Contract. As well, we have been overseeing the implementation of our new Agreement and participating in the development of the plans for our new, international bases. We have been busy—and maybe a bit too complacent. It has recently become obvious to me that the absence of the rational discourse we enjoyed during our years of working together on our contract has enabled the proliferation of discontent amongst a familiar demographic. Hopefully this letter will serve to re-direct our energies and begin a constructive dialogue once again.

The part we got the most right during our recent negotiation was the two-way discussion that we conducted during the process, and the three years preceding it. It was that intra-member dialogue that resulted in the development and adoption of the four cornerstone issues of Scope, Work Rules, Healthcare, and Retirement, which enabled us to maintain our focus so diligently during that grueling process. The same dialogue was a key component in the determination of the tone, tenor, and subject mix of our communications. Another thing that proved to be critical to the successful conclusion of the negotiating process was our insistence on the ability to accurately determine the cost or value of each item in the negotiation. Work rules, Healthcare, and Retirement were analyzed in depth and mathematical costing factors were assigned to the various subsets of each. Scope, of course, is less mathematical than empirical. Although an absence of effective Scope protections would render the remainder of any Contract virtually moot, it is of course, almost impossible to assign a simple dollar value to it. The value is in “who gets the flying,” and make no mistake, the crowning jewel of our 2006 Agreement is our considerable advancements in this most important Section. We secured the flying. As simple as it may sound, the ability to understand and quantify the value of your negotiating goals is vital to the process, because there is really no other way to determine when you have achieved your goals. You need to know when the deal is done.

There is another invaluable body of knowledge we gleaned while we ground our way through the negotiating process. We learned that both sides, pilots and management, have demographic breakdowns of remarkable similarity. On our side, we are disbursed over a classic bell curve. On one end of the curve we have a vocal group of individuals who are combative, not easily satisfied, and frankly, will never be willing to make a deal, because the consummation of an agreement renders moot their discontent. This group demands an inordinate amount of the Union ’s time, stimulates a modicum of constructive debate, but at the same time does significant damage to the process and desire of good people to participate in it. The counterparts to this group on the other side are the management “hawks.” They take the position that the pilots are a fractured group, unable to make and keep agreements. They don’t really wish to recognize the sacrifices we make on a daily basis to get the job done. They believe the company would be better served by assuming a hard line position with the pilots and/or seeking alternative means of moving the freight. They assume all pilots are part of the loud and vocal minority, presumably because they too are loud and vocal.