I hate to rehash but really this is what many of the disgruntled are mad about. Did we expect them to say "we can afford it, we just are not going to do it." Of course they said they cannot afford it. It's the fact that we "believed" what they said that makes me mad. That and after the fact when we got our retirement funding letters, we could see that the company had put 4 Billion over funding into the retirement accounts. Once we agreed "they could not afford it", the company completed a 4 Billion $ stock buy back. Guess where that money came from.

I guess my biggest problem is as an ALPA group we should listen to what the group wants and make it happen. Not listen to what the group wants and then ask the company what of that they will give us. Then we do stupid stuff to ourselves. Like changing the Hotel in lieu, the 18 hour va 12 hour international check in and of course a 6 year contract. All things the company never asked us to do, we proposed them all by ourselves.

That and the big numbers of yes voters that never really read the TA. I still see things that I get told "can't be right" every month. But that's what the contract actually says. My bank for Oct $4500, the actual ticket prices already bought $6600. No where in the contract do we get the actual fares we get a quote of what they think the fare will be. The established fares quoted after the tickets were bought still do not reflect a higher fare, but neither the baseline or established fares have to be real fares. Yep, that's what we agreed to, but many still think we get the higher of actual fare or established if we deviate early.

Sorry for the rant, but when I hear we are going to begin outside discussions the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Until we get union guys calling a spade a spade on the last contract, it's tough to trust them with changes to the current deal.