For those not on Facebook. The smartest man in the room has more to say:

"The reaction to my previous post tells a lot about the logic and reasoning behind this “new direction” in the pilot group. When you are presented a fact based argument and your response is “You are a butthole” then you have a pretty good indication that you are bankrupt of ideas and are simply running on bluster. In fact this “new direction” and the “new MEC” are operating almost like a cult where you either adopt the gospel hook line and sinker or you are shunned from the society. You might note that you have already lost the orange lanyard unity war; if management sees someone with an orange lanyard they can either think the pilot is on board with the union or just afraid to be harassed by the Council 66 goon squad. “Join me or else” is not unity it’s blackmail.

Since there were no facts presented to counter my arguments I thought it might stimulate discussion to find out exactly how we got to C2K and understand the role of incremental pattern hopping. I am not sure exactly of the chronological order but this is close, starting around 1997-8:

We converted our profit sharing in a straight trade 6% profit sharing for 6% of pay. That’s right it wasn’t 14.5% in pay vs. 5% profit sharing like the TA is was a straight 1 for 1 trade. John Malone was the NC chairman.

American got a deal following the 15 minute strike.
We signed a 737 NG deal about on par with American’s rate.
Northwest got a deal following a strike, slightly ahead of American.
We signed a 777/767-400 deal ahead of Northwest’s 747 rate in a deal that also eliminated the B-Scale. We might have had a 3% general rate increase with that, but not sure.

United signed a deal that went a few points above our 777 rate and brought their other aircraft along

Delta signed a deal that was United plus 1% (C2K).
US Air’s me too clause kicked in and put them just above Delta.
That is how pattern bargaining works. You don’t take leaps of 45% at a time. You take incremental steps and you get all the carriers taking steps in a timely fashion to build on each other. That was one of the problems we had from about 2010 on. US Air was stalled, American was stalled, United was stalled, and Continental was stalled. The only pattern was being set by Delta. In fact, the United deal that was just signed was the first time someone gave us a pattern to bargain off of for years. Now we are squandering that opportunity because we are not following sound bargaining practices.

If someone believes this is possible I would like them to cite one example since deregulation where one carrier signed a deal that put them top of industry plus 45%. In fact you would be hard pressed to find any that were double digits above top of market; I am not sure there are any. That isn’t how pattern bargaining works.

Your second assignment is to go into a BMW dealer, get your whole family dressed up in orange, tell the dealer you took a survey of your family, and you demand a BMW top of the line sedan at 45% below invoice. Tell them you are unified in your position and they have to find the exact car you want within the exact time frame you tell them. Oh and then you can add the kicker; wait for it……wait for it……tell them that they have to make that deal because BMW makes billions in profits and they can afford it. Let me know how that works out for you.
Contract negotiations are not that mysterious. You just apply the normal rules you use in any negotiation; identify the market, research the market, make your offer based on facts and data. Sign the deal when you have gone as far as you can go. This is not a testosterone contest, this is not a propaganda contest, this is just a business deal. The same as any other deal just with bigger numbers. If you can’t get out of market by 45% on a $50,000 car, how are you going to do that on a $3,000,000,000 yearly contract? You can insult me all day and it won’t change that hard fact."

You are no more dumb for having read what this has-been had to say.