I've been at this game a long time and I never sell myself short. That said, I'll entertain any offers.

As I've said, I've worked under PBS. I haven't just heard about it from a friend at United. It would cost them a lot, and I'm quite sure Fedex wouldn't pay what I'd require. Again, they want to talk, I'd listen.

We have other line in the sand items. We wanted to burn the heretics that dare considered to look at other retirement options. I have to admit it, but I agreed with the union's position at the time. Now many of us wonder if that was so smart after all. If they would have said, "the retirement high five number would stay at 260k", would you have entertained any other options? Let's say you are 30 and just got hired here. What is 130k (minus any survivor benefit) going to be worth in 2046? We can only use statistical inflation numbers to guess, but I'd say it won't be worth a lot. What would a 17% B fund (cash over cap)be worth? Again, we can only guess at market performance, so we really don't have a clear picture. But, needless to say, I think most of us would have listened to the offer had we known that our A fund wasn't going to improve.

This conversation started when someone said he thought we our contract was a win because we didn't get PBS or give up our A fund. I simply mentioned that we already have our A fund and current bidding system, and really wasn't a win to keep what we already have. Could we have missed an opportunity to improve our A fund if we discontinued it for new hires? Would we be throwing them under the bus, or did we do that by insisting to keep them under the current plan? I think we should have looked at it more closely, but our myopia caused us to not listen to other options.

Again, I'd be willing to listen to any offers they want to talk about.