As I am not their accountant, I am not 100% sure why the company would do that, unless there is a win in it for them. I would think that win is long term cost that they want to chip away at now versus later.

Maybe it's just me, but having it retirement negotiation as a solo event seems to allow a true apples-to-apples comparison. This is versus having the company and their expert negotiators and accountants playing the three card monte/shell game with other parts of the contract.

If we don't like the proposal, we vote it down.

If we do like it, it doesn't get caught up with things like compensation, scheduling, lie flat seats, bank fares or the myriad of things that apparently some think are losses from the last contract. To me, it allows us to decide our fate with all other things being equal and not have 28 or so other sections of variables.

What if the company said, "Sure you can have your A plan cap increase...and a 18% B Plan, but you must agree to PBS and/or take adjust how our vacation works, and/or a compensation increase that doesn't measure up to our peers." How many Excel warriors will be flooding APC with their analysis?

There is a lot of discussion on here about how great the company's negotiating team is versus how well versed our union reps are. Why would we want to make it more cloudy versus having the apples to apples comparison versus trying to find out how good the apples are in a syrup covered fruit salad?

Again, maybe it's just me, but I would think those that don't think we have the world's greatest negotiators (or at least negotiators that are better than the company) would rather take each topic one-by-one versus having everything open and having to decide about all at once.
Essentially a line item veto. But that's how it has always been done, so it must be right. It just seems the all or nothing is the win for the company.