Originally Posted by
FTv3
Youre only fooled because you think you know more than the EB or you contend they are lying to you. The facts, presented with copious evidence and history, is the company wasn’t going to negotiate. Had we voted the
e-TA’s down we’d be in the same spot without the pay raises, retirement bumps, and have a bigger hill to climb for contract 202X. It was a good outcome under crappy circumstances.
In order to prove voting no was the better solution you’d have to provide supporting evidence that the union would have been able to force UPS’s hand in coming earnestly to the table. I’m sure the EB consider this but either they realized that there would be nothing we could actually do or that we lacked the resolve to get it done. Considering when they asked us to do the work of one pilot but we failed miserably, reasonable to see their lack of faith. We have Tonia on the warpath right now and we could easily fix it if we all chose to fly as scheduled but that’s not happening. Heck, we can’t even get people to write simple ERs which the union has repeatedly asked for. So no, forcing UPS to the table was clearly not an option making the e-TAs the only outcome that benefited us. IMHO that was a gift from the company, surprised they even indulged in it and a huge fist bump to the EB for squeezing those drops out of a rock.
To your point regarding contract length - yeah, these 10yr cycles are total bs but that’s an RLA issue primarily.
That’s certainly a valid argument for the second extension. What about the first one? We as a group made a very emotional decision when we voted for the first extension. I voted for it. COVID was just starting to take its effect, pax carriers would be talking furlough soon, and it looked very much like we were dodging a bullet. In hindsight, that proved not to be the case and we would have been negotiating a contract with what will probably have been the greatest leverage this pilot group will ever have. In reality, extension one set us up to be competing with IBT a couple years later for company negotiating assets. One could make an argument that our union leaders should’ve seen that coming. In hindsight, I, along with a large majority of this group made a decision based on fear and uncertainty in voting for extension 1. When rumors of a second extension started swirling, it became obvious that we had been duped into another exceedingly long contract cycle by UPS. I agree with you that we have a good team steering this union. I also believe that that team is far from infallible and that the extensions were a major misstep on our part. As I said before, re-litigation is futile and counterproductive. What’s done is done. The takeaway for our group should be that we need to deal with this company with eyes fully open all the time and quickly recognize any attempts by UPS to stall or push back full blown negotiations for what they are: A massive coup for UPS, and a significant loss for our pilot group.