I like the light color!

Everyone would rather have a TA that is easily passable. I didn't chose this "Focus Plus" thing, or the AIP's: this MEC did. There is no path that lets us crap on the NMB by reneging on a substantial number of AIP's (if any), and still get released for a strike. This is their process, their plan, and their timeframe. They just wasted the last few weeks of it, and we're weeks away from the NMB staying put during elections (the Presidential elections, and ours, because they evidently don't mediate through changes in power). Passable or not, they need to produce, we need to direct. It's very simple.

So the alternatives aren't to hang out until we get a nice TA we all like, or vote on a marginal TA. It's vote on what they've been doing for a year, or wait years for them to do something else.

Still, I think that there is a TA that's easily passable available to, even with the so-so AIP's. I think the majority expects results, and I think the guys we want to pre-empt the result of a vote are doing so because they just can't accept that the majority will, in fact, express itself in a vote.

If the MEC does their job.