Past two guys I flew with were utterly clueless regarding the RLA and the status of negotiations. Both were more concerned about the possibility of a recession coming than they were about obtaining an industry-leading contract.

But they were wearing lanyards!

I’d say a little less than half the guys I’ve flown with in the last several months have been in the mostly clueless category. We’ve got a long ways to go in terms of education.

I do agree that a 51%+ SAV gives us quite a bit of leverage, but it would certainly be better with a higher percentage vote. The way I look at is the first 51% of the vote gives us something like 80% of the leverage we could get out of a SAV. The next 49% of the vote would give us another 20% leverage.

With SWAPA’s megaphone, if they wanted to, and if they learned how to innovatively communicate to the legions of checked-out koolies and ostriches, then we could win many of them over.

The barometer for where we stand with respect to a SAV and our readiness to pose the credible threat of a strike should not be how many lanyards the MCO BOD rep sees on our guys when he’s out in the system. IMO, the lanyard means almost nothing.

The barometer should be based on polling around those issues. Or maybe if the lanyard said something like, “I’M READY TO STRIKE!”, it might mean something.