Originally Posted by zerozero

And while we're fine tuning our vocabulary, I'd like to offer this correction in the spirit of "mentoring" people who are new to the screwed up way we arrive at legally binding documents like our "contract".

The contract was never ratified. It could have been! But the company spent hundreds of millions of dollars and six years fighting us to explicitly avoid ratification.

Ratification happens after the document passes a vote by the union membership. Theoretically, the company and union negotiate until reaching a "tentative agreement" (TA). The TA is then put out for a vote. The vote either fails or passes. If the vote passes then the document is ratified.

That's not what happens in real life at Atlas Air. Historically, at Atlas Air, the company buys another operation which triggers a clause in the contract which said the two parties will negotiate for 9 months and then all remaining sections go to a "independent" (ha!) 3rd party arbitrator. Naturally, only the biggest and most important sections would be left remaining.

The arbitrator would then produce a document, bless it, and impose it on the union membership for a length of time to be determined only by him.

Now, as alluded to by Elevation, we may have new owners (deal remains to be done). So, who knows? Maybe business will be done differently in the future.

But that's a short course in the history of labor relations at Atlas Air for anyone who is interested.