Originally Posted by
Check Essential
alfa-
I understand your point. Although you quoted my post, you won't hear me touting professional negotiators. I kinda defy the "forum radical" conventional wisdom on that issue.
I think too many guys have this image of a long table with people sitting on opposite sides in a staredown. Hours and hours of arguing and face to face haggling while they have pizzas brought in for the grueling all-night bargaining session. Sleeves rolled up, green eye shades, all that.
I think its a lot more about research, cost analysis, revenue projections and competing spreadsheets exchanged via e-mail over many months.
The value of professional negotiators in that environment is more myth than reality.
When we get to the end-game, it'll be more about the courage of the leadership and the determination and unity of the pilot group. The "negotiators" won't have much to do with it.
I agree with all of that, and will add this...
One problem I see with our negotiations is that we tend to reach a compromise, even when we shouldn't. I think the problem is not that we're not represented well, but maybe we're represented a little too faithfully. I think we as a group are actually too willing to compromise, and too interested in getting to a result. The guys sitting at the table are going through numbers, and working their way through the problem, as if dealing with an emergency. Which we are, because if this mofo burns or crashes, so does our career.
A professional negotiator might be helpful to try to get us to see the value of walking away from the process, but he can't change our basic problem WRT seniority, and our effective marriage to our airline.
And so they can't seem to help themselves, and produce... something, which (unfortunately for us) reflects our dark fears of bankruptcy in bad times. As soon as a T/A is produced, we're screwed, a) because the union will feel absolutely obligated to sell this deformed baby they helped bring into the world, and b) because
we are actually the biological parents of the monstrosity anyway, and we're about to start paying for it.
And so virtually every T/A passes.
Exceptions seem to occur only in the best of times, when we are driven by greed rather than fear. That's when management temporarily feels married to us, and they are anxious not to derail
their gravy train.
So my thinking is not that we need a professional, we need an MEC that is willing to pull the negotiators back, and stop them from doing their work so dilligently. In other words, we need to learn how to say "no" to a T/A. Which is backed up by a pilot group that's willing to gamble their jobs a little.
Judging by our recent votes... we have some way to go.
I'm in the camp that believes that we need our careers not to be tied to any airline. Whether it takes a NSL, or some other device,
anything that will allow us to walk from a job, and get an equivalent job somewhere, and bring us into the world of free agency, will stop this compliant attitude. Then, maybe, a professional could help a little.