Originally Posted by gloopy

I get your point, and maybe that's what they think too. But when this general type of stratedgy is used, it often unifies the pilot group far more than they would otherwise be. Had they not trashed all domestic flying for any and all on paper credit reductions, far fewer pilots would want better work rules. Had they not implemented massive degradations to DH and boarding to intentionally harass us, fewer pilots would care about that. All we would care about is maybe a small COLA+ raise and we'd sign onto current book for 3-4 more years.

Sudden hits to DH especially was a poor move by them. Arbitrators LOVE easy low to no cost things major peer set competitors already have in old book. If they try to go hard to the mat with that, they will look very, very unreasonable.

So the fulcrum here is really the raise (in pay and maybe retirement although that seems to have gone into the weeds straight from the hangar but we'll see) but either way this looks to be a poor negotiating stratedgy on their end IMO because we were never about to get some massive 30% raise and a restored FAE based retirement to any significant extent regardless, even if we ignored the work rule and DH abuses. Likewise, even with focus on those, we're still not signing anything without a raise above COLA to some extent, and I believe what is TA-able and ratifiable in those areas in either case are pretty similar. And as a result of the sudden onset degradations by design in other areas, we will be more involved and less likely to fall for a sub par TA.