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(Copied with permission)

If you decided to drive your car off the edge of the Grand Canyon, Thelma and Louise style, there is a short period of time where you could convince yourself that you have invented a flying car. There is no road under you, yet you haven’t hit the ground yet. At some point, reality will take over.

We face a similar situation now. Our negotiators did not have enough latitude to close a deal. The NMB gave us a three week time out to think about it. In that interim, the 12 reps decided to give the negotiators LESS latitude and they did it in secret closed off meetings. The NMB then convened a status conference that was attended not just by the mediators but by a Board Member. After listening to the negotiators describe their reduced ability to negotiate, they got a long lecture from the Board Member about what it will take to get a deal. She was not happy.

Now we have a four day negotiating session scheduled next week and the more naïve members of the MEC 12 are thinking they invented a flying car. They think that because there are negotiations scheduled, they have won the battle and are now in the catbird’s seat. Unfortunately they are missing two key points of reality; first, the NMB is not going to park us until we get a chance to present our demands to the company and then they reject them and second the direction that was given to our negotiators was deliberately designed to fail so that we will not have a deal prior to the MEC officer elections this fall.

We are going to have our negotiations and it’s nearly certain that the company will reject the demands of the 12. Not once, not twice, but three times last year senior management came to the MEC and told them the parameters of a deal; sick leave changes, productivity improvement, and profit sharing changes in exchange for much higher pay rates and other improvements that pilots want. It’s clear that those parameters still exist today and it’s clear that the company has convinced the NMB of the reasonableness of that position. It’s obvious that the first negotiating team found out those limits, the second negotiating team found out those limits, and the next, and the next, and the next negotiating teams will find out those limits also.

What happens when the impasse is reached? The question is really how sick and tired is the NMB in dealing with these 12 on the MEC. If the answer is “totally fed up” then we will get parked. If the answer is “almost totally fed up” then they will send the negotiators back to the MEC for one more try with the instructions to not come back until they have authority to cut a deal. What’s at stake in this game? After seeing what has happened with “retro pay” we are now at a point where we will either get a 17% + or – raise this year or 3% in retro pay. Next year it will be 21% versus 6% retro.

Let’s be clear. There are none amongst the 12 that have ever closed an industry leading deal ever. They are mostly neophytes who were elected on the platform of “vote for me and all your dreams will come true.” It’s interesting that on one hand pilots are very proud of their experience and think that experience is a critical component in justifying their negotiating demands. Yet they then claim that the most important factor to consider in representative elections is that they have no negotiating experience at all. Of those amongst the 12 that have a track record, it is a record of a long and documented history of failing in every negotiation they have tried to run. Given this history you might think they would listen to people with more experience, listen to their negotiating team, listen to their professional advisers, but you would be wrong. Not only did they not listen, they kicked them out of the room for the most part and then did the exact opposite of their advice. In fact they are now ignoring the scientific polling instead they claim that their email inbox is more accurate.

The final question is when will the pilots rebel against these reps who are following a well-worn path to failure. In my opinion we have pilots divided about in thirds. There is a group that will vote no on every deal no matter what. The pilots who voted yes last time for the most part will take the deal that’s on the table now. The middle third are guys who mostly voted yes in years before but bought into the orange crowd’s promises of quick deals with untold riches if we just voted no on TA1. I think that many in that middle third are now getting their fill of empty promises from the 12. It turns out we aren’t getting 3B4 raises, the company isn’t desperate for a deal, and the company isn’t going to just keep shoveling money at us until we say that’s enough. I see the middle third as waking up from a bad dream.

So will the pressure on the reps build and force them to give our negotiators the latitude to cut a deal or will the manipulators, with a long track record of failure, continue to manipulate our negotiations to finish their years long power struggle to take over the MEC completely? My guess is that the manipulators win and the pilots will have a long time to think about what their next move is.