Originally Posted by Scoop

Maybe, but what is a "significant population" in your opinion?

My response was to counter his claim/hint that no-one wants anything but more DC. That is flat out wrong. A significant population I think is 40 percentish.

I am 55 and would love to see the retirement improved but each year we hire 1000 younger guys and over 500 older guys retire. If the MEC thinks they can wait for the perfect contract they will lose their chance at this via simple attrition. Every year the percentage of Pilots who prioritize retirement decreases.

No argument here.

The only way retirement will be addressed is if we get a quick TA but that is all but impossible since the more militant Pilots seem to have the ear of the MEC. Nothing wrong with being aggressive and we have certainly had our share of pusillanimous union folks, think TA-1, but you have to choose your battles wisely.

I think we have some time to negotiate. By taking the attitude that we need a quick TA for this to happen, you are painting the NC into a box.

We lost this battle back when we agreed to LOA 51 - not to challenge the pension termination. I voted against that LOA but my side lost. I moved on. If we could not muster enough guys to hold the line at a pension when 100% of the Pilots cared about pension how can we convince guys to fight for it now? And why should the younger guys take up a cause that we refused to engage in 14 years ago?

I'm not necessarily advocating a new DB. Scoop, come on, do you not remember we were in the throes of bankruptcy and all that entailed? Our pension was going away no matter what we did. I firmly believe this to be true.


Like I said, I am for improving the pension but I just don't see it happening as any sort of DB type income stream. We have tons of leverage but guess what? To use leverage you have to be willing to trade it for something. As long as a very vocal minority keep insisting that we can get to a TA with zero concessions we will get only two things: Jack and Squat.

We will never get a deal if there is not negotiation.

The sad part is the guys yelling the loudest for retirement for the most part are the same guys insisting that will vote no for any TA with even a single concession. I realize most of this is bluster, but they have effectively boxed our MEC into a corner making the very thing they desire less likely to occur.


Scoop