Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

Yes, I was in the room.

Background:

• the pilots wanted to see the deal
• Richard Anderson was committed to pulling the deal off the table since revenues were declining and he thought the agreement was too much
• The MEC had been votin the deal down and most every member trying to improve it. Dave Nestor made the most progress on sick verification issues because his own hospitalization provided an excellent objective example, sorta case study. Other Reps tried to leverage a % here or there. Anderson wasn't budging and replied to each attempted renegotiation with threats
• the Negotiating Committee and the MEC Chairman (leader of the MEC Administration) believed Richard Anderson and thought the pilots would be better taking the deal and instantly launching into the AMJV and Contract 2018
• Some of us were already a few pages into C2018
• Polling data said the TA would pass (my opinion- the polling failed to ask the pilots about managements asks)

The MEC kept voting it down. ALPA Attorney Bob Salverson who is an older gentleman (now retired) who often acted as a Parliamentarian and was an expert on process made a presentation that stated exactly that - if you want to turn it down, fine. However, if you want to send a message with credibility - let the pilots see it & have the pilots turn it down.

The vote was to send the TA to the pilots without MEC recommendation. That is a matter of record and anyone who is interested should be able to get a copy of the resolution from our MEC Secretary.

One problem was that when the Admin and some Reps confronted the miscommunications (& outright lies) they were perceived as defending the TA when in reality they were just trying to ensure the pilots truly understood what the deal really was. I constantly got caught up in trying to explain 1 E. 9. and 1 P. 4. and being called a "liar" although quoting directly from the TA. In retrospect, the less said, the better. John Malone's Admin mostly remained off Social Media and was better for it.

History clearly indicates better was available by waiting. United did a +1 on our non existent rejected TA and we managed to +1 them while improving scope and leaving profit sharing alone. Some parts of the rejected TA were actually better than C15, but the retention of profit sharing more than made up for those changes.

- sorry about the edits, the battery in the keyboard is dead -