Originally Posted by
LinaPeru
it exists. But it doesn’t exist in this nonsensical way.
What is the upper limit the company will pay for a labor contract? Once you figure that out, you’ve found your negotiating capital. But they’ll never reveal the absolute number. That figure was different two years ago, it’s different today, and it’ll keep changing two, three, or four years from now.
until then it’s a boogie man. “Oh don’t do this because we might miss out on that”.
yeah? How do you positively know that?
you won’t have the slightest idea until you see the first TA.
how you allocate negotiating capital = beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Zooropa is simply reiterating the common sense notion that in a negotiation, everything is worth something and so if you want something you have to negotiate away something in exchange.
First, because that’s what negotiation is. Negotiating.
Second, because there’s a finite aggregate benefit that the company will agree to. Because there’s a finite aggregate benefit that the company CAN agree to. That pilots of an airline selling extremely discounted tickets need to be reminded of this will never cease to amaze.
LinaPeru’s point about having to vote down TAs in order to identify what the company is willing to give is beside the point. We know there’s a maximum, and there’s questionable value in delaying a contract for years only to
potentially eke out some marginal gain somewhere while we’d have been better off taking the win years earlier.
It’s not about beating the company. It’s about us winning. And that requires a holistic approach that considers not only “what does the final contract look like,” but
how much did we lose while we were getting there and how much carnage we had to endure to get it.
Go ahead and cue the “DERP is that you Barry?!?” responses from the usual crew with nothing better to say.