Originally Posted by Hillbilly

Using a pull down provision is not the issue, it’s the manner in which you do so. It makes a difference, particularly in the VB instance, that will carry forward into future negotiations. We sat around knowing full well that the company was expending a lot of man power to get the IT in place for handling VB bidding and administration and just as they got it done, yanked the rug out from underneath them.

I don’t want you to misconstrue me on this, so let me be clear, I was never in favor of VB, I would have never gained from VB and I was in favor of it ultimately getting pulled down, but not in this way.

Anytime in the past that VB has been brought up, it’s been the boogeyman for us because we have a sum total of zero data points on it to truly nail down the effects on staffing and schedule quality so we can cost it out accurately without guessing. It is my opinion that the MEC should have called a meeting right after the 4th of July. The June VB in MCO would have already taken place and they could review what actually happened to staffing and schedules for that month and July. The bidding would already be in progress for August. The MEC makes the call to pull down VB at that time. The required notice would have allowed for the August bid period and that would have been the end of it. The big difference would be that we would have 3 months of data to use going forward. We may have discovered that:
1) The company didn’t like it and was just going to quit using it and we wouldn’t have to deal with them asking for it ever again; or
2) The company looooved it and if it ever got brought up again at the table, the price tag would be yuuuge; or
3) Something in between 1 and 2.

Either way, we would have followed through and actually allowed the test to take place under the intent of the agreement and no one could question that we upheld our end of the deal. What we did was perfectly allowable, but by denying the test itself at the last moment after the work and expense had been incurred, we stuck them with a hot poker. They won’t forget that and that’s why I don’t think they’ll ever agree to it again. I wouldn’t if I were them. Heck, it was the very catalyst for the company to say sorry, we aren’t going to be able to put any IT manpower into working on reroute automation.

Management had made some boneheaded moves leading up to the April pull down with the 350 delivery, no movement on the AM JV talks and the scope infractions, but as time has shown, what we did has had zero impact on any of those issues. So if we did it under the auspices of eye for an eye or to stick it to the man, then we’ve shown that as a failed method of achieving things for the pilots.

You also have to consider that we might be the ones trying to achieve something in a future negotiation that the company is hesitant on and a test period with pull down might have been used to nudge them over the edge and get what we want in the future. That’s a tool that I believe has been summarily removed from the tool bag currently carried by our negotiators.

Also, we would have the necessary data to quantify a stance on the VB issue rather than it being the bogeyman. As it stands today, we still don’t know squat about it definitively.