Piloto Noche,
Spot on. The schedule is pretty optimized, but you are not alone in your concern that every time we attempt to improve work rules (ie scheduling), our pilot negotiators fail to see all the ways that the company can make things even more efficient (read onerous), and still stay within the contractual verbiage. The "Grid Penalty" will never be breached, but unfortunately, it gave the company a set of parameters to shoot for, but always just stop short of. Now they schedule to a target that is just short of triggering the Grid Penalty.
I think it is highly unlikely that we will be able to get back any of the scheduling "givebacks" that we lost in previous negotiations, because we all know that the company values control over all else. At least not without making more major concessions.
So there are many of us who think perhaps we should try a different approach. Perhaps our negotiating committee could try the following scenario. They go in and sit down at the table. The company asks "what are your openers?" The reply: "Just give us all a 50% pay raise, and you can leave everything else the same." The company's reply: "We'll give you a 30% pay raise." The negotiating committee's reply: "Make it 35% and you have a deal." The company's reply: "Done. Let's get some barbeque."
Perhaps wishful thinking, but I think the time has come for us all to start emailing the negotiating committee and telling them what we actually want. Keep it simple, mind you. With our current divided and fractured membership (courtesy of DW), I believe the one thing we can all agree on is that a nice sized pay increase can cover other shortcomings - (ie, we can invest some of the extra $$$ on our own to get a better than 1% B fund bump.) I remember there being 4 cornerstones the last time around, but if you ask me, the 1% increase in B fund and the less than cost of living pay raise that we got fell far short of the 4 cornerstones. To quote a baseball movie, "You don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkdt, what you need is a curve ball." We don't need catchy phrases to put on stickers or bag tags, we don't need catchy "cornerstones" , what we need is enough money to cover the ridiculously surging cost of living and to be be able to plan for our eventual retirement (for those of us who would actually like to retire someday, and not work until we are dead.)
Shoot for a 35-50% pay raise across the board, and leave the rest of the stuff the same, so we don't lose any more. a 35-50% pay raise is something we all could easily vote yes on, and no "hard sell" would be necessary.