Originally Posted by
KnockKnock
First, I never said the NC sold us out. Not once, so don't put words into my mouth. I said, "We", sold out. "We", being the pilot group. Too many saw that 300 # and jumped. We were very vocal about how insulting $280/hr was. We put words into action with a picket and a strike vote. The NC didn't just negotiate a better deal of their own volition. We directed them to do so. We just pulled up short when it mattered most. You do understand how the Union operates, right?
We are the union. We're one entity. If we sold out, they sold out. You don't agree with that, but that's my take.
Third, we were already 3 years into our contract fight. It's not like AS rushed $306 to the table day one. Our ask was $320, not $337. We weren't even willing to stand our ground on our own ask. Had we waited for DAL, the company would have been forced to recognize $337 as a new benchmark and been ecstatic to give us $320 with the likelihood of even more, to come within a few percent of DAL. I don't know if you know this but $320 is $14/hr more than $306. Why do I belive this, well, history and past behaviors. During the JCBA, the company wanted to give us AA's rates, which were originally 6% less than what we ended up with. AA was losing pilots and gave a 6%, out of contract, raise to its pilots. This forced AS management to acknowledge a new industry floor and bump our rates by 6%. So why wouldn't AS now be forced to acknowledge the same reality??
This isn't at all picking and choosing viewpoints. It's living in reality and forming opinions based off past experiences and managment behaviors.
Your second point contradicts your third point. You just said they don't negotiate in good faith, don't care, etc, but now in the third paragraph you say why wouldn't they bump us up?
This is all guessing on your end. That when Delta has 337, AS would trip to give you 320. Maybe, maybe not. So the 18% would have liked to have directed our NC to STALL our negotiations to wait and see somebody else go first. This is what we call being Monday morning quarterback.