Originally Posted by
Baradium
You said multiple times in the previous posts that if you "play the game right" you'll get released.
You also like bringing up that 40% pay raise. Great, high percentage. Still keeps their pay around the bottom of the industry. And they had to GIVE UP work rules to get that. If their pilots were doing so well, they wouldn't have had to give up anything, especially in this environment.
And just to be clear, under the RLA the union does not have a "right" to strike. It has to be given permission. Rights aren't something you only accomplish by authorization. There may be an ability there somewhere, but it's not a right.
You use examples of unions that were not released and where union leadership (in the case of Spirit) went on record saying "this is all we'll get because they won't release us" as examples of where the company thinking they'd be released got them a contract.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to accomplish, but you came across to me as being demeaning to the Alaska pilot group while at the same time making this process into a sure thing for labor.
Baradium, bro, are you a native English speaker?
Okay, this time, I never said, "if you 'play the game right' you'll get released." Your claim is I said that in multiple posts. So I went back and reread what I wrote to make sure that I wasn't "misremembering" what I wrote ala Brian Williams.
Here are the relevant statements I made that you might have misunderstood:
...where you might feasibly get released from mediation if the two sides are at an impasse.
...a union can file a motion in federal court petitioning for a release from mediation. The bar for overcoming the NMB's position that two parties are not at an impasse in federal court is very high. That is why the union has to play the game right during mediation.
In other cases, the courts have hinted at approximately a minimum 2-2.5 year timeframe for being released from mediation if still at an impasse. However, as I said, that requires that your union's conduct be impeccable during mediation. "Impeccable" conduct means bargaining in absolutely good faith, and never stalling or appearing to stall.
Note the emphasized portions of the above text. None of that sounds to me like it implies a certainty of being released. Maybe it did to you but words and phrases like "can", "hint at", and "might" are not commonly used to suggest a "sure thing". Maybe where you come from that's how people talk. I dunno.
And, just to be clear with you, you may not think there's a right to self-help (strike), but at least one federal judge has said there is a right to self-help under the RLA. I already quoted that case, but I'll put it here again:
The rights of self-help owned by both union and management have been deliberately preserved by Congress, albeit held in temporary abeyance.
In a matter like this, given the choice between your opinion and what the federal judge has written out in a matter of case law, I'll go with the federal judge.
And yes, I think most pilot unions have resigned themselves to thinking the RLA handcuffs them rather than trying to play the game and use the RLA to our own advantage.
And btw, Spirit did not play the game perfectly. Their illegal job action last year that required the intervention of the federal courts did not help their case in the least bit. That was a major error on their part regardless of whether or not the union was officially involved or not. That hurt them.