Originally Posted by
capncrunch
If you are willing to set the ceiling before we even sit down to the table, then yes there is nothing more for us to say.
Their balance sheet is made by wizards in accounting who can make the black turn red. We need to tell management what our product is worth and they can find a way to pay for it. That is not our problem. We should not price our product on what they say they have, we should tell them what it costs. They can raise the ticket prices a couple of bucks and pay for everything we want. Why sell yourself short and fight their argument?
We seem to be acting like a whipped dog. We come to the negotiating table with our head hung low and our tail between our legs. Ridiculous.
I agree. It seems that too many of us have lost perspective on exactly how far this profession has fallen. For example, we took a 42% pay cut. It would take a 73% pay increase just to restore back to the rates from which we started. Now, factor in inflation from the time we took the cuts to the time our new contract becomes effective, and it will take a lot more than a 73% pay increase to actually restore our buying power. And that's just one piece of the "pie". We also lost our pension and had thousands of our jobs outsourced.
As you point out, the difference between what they want to pay us and full restoration is probably just a few bucks per ticket. Let management figure out how to pay for pilots, just the same as they have to figure out how to pay for fuel when oil prices go up. This is the perspective I want the people negotiating on my behalf to have.