Originally Posted by
Zard
I hope every contract going forward is a race to get released. It's hard to argue the kompany's past practice of delaying contract negotiations as long as possible as negotiating in good faith. Call an impasse an impasse and move forward with the RLA process.
The book away phenomena is one of the few labor actions capable of hitting the C suite where it hurts: revenue and stock prices.
Read this:
RLA Conundrums - John M Livingood. It's a RLA education appetizer written by a NMB mediator.
Here's the deal with negotiations and the RLA. There's no real race to get released. The NMB mediator mostly controls that. The best possible thing we can do to expedite the process is to request mediation as soon as possible in the process without looking like we're trying to game the system. It's the start of the mediation timer that counts. Time spent in negotiations (like right now) does not count AT ALL toward the time it will eventually take us to get released. Hopefully, with a Biden-appointed NMB, they will be more amenable to releasing us sooner than later. The idea that we are more likely to be released by a NMB appointed by a Democratic president vs a Trump-appointed NMB increases pressure on the company the longer we spend in mediation because they know that a release becomes more and more likely the longer we spend in mediation. The idea of the book-away effect becomes more and more real as the threat of a release becomes more and more likely in mediation. We can never have the threat of a release if we never enter mediation.