The thing you have to remember is that regional unions are fighting an uphill battle that started in the basement. The entire idea of a regional from mainline management's point of view was to save $$$. Everything at the regional can be cheaper. New ground crews, even in the hubs that haven't been around for 15-20 years. New crew members who they can pay very little cause they are building off "commuter" contracts. New gate agents who again haven't been in the job for the long haul and depend on them for a retirement. The regionals have replaced a whole bunch of career-type jobs with temporary ones. Why are they temporary? Because when a regional workforce gets too pushy and expensive guess what? They are contract labor, you can just have someone else fill the contract. As long as each carrier (like Delta) has many regional partners, we will never even come close to closing the gap in work rules and pay between us and mainline. And even if we do, we will simply be replaced by another cheaper regional. The only way we would be able to change this is to have a base contract (that is very respectable) for each mainlines regional partners, or, only have one regional for each mainline carrier, guaranteed. If we are ever going to see any stability and descent improvement, this is what we all should be fighting for.