The gopher hunter has it right.
There's one other factor in play as well. Pilot morale.
You might think management doesn't care whether we are happy or not but they are currently taking advantage of a group that regularly picks up all the open time, never calls in sick and generally goes all out to get the mission accomplished. That can change quickly with just a little shift in the rhetoric coming from our union leadership.
Moak was all about cooperation and engagement and working together. That worked. Management certainly loved it. Guys bought it. The company prospered financially. The pilots, not so much. We have been operating on the principle of deferred gratification. We worked hard and worked for cheap the last few years expecting to be paid later. Well; later has arrived. We aren't willing to wait another 2 or 3 years to see some payback. Constructive engagement was supposed to be a two-way street. That's about to be tested.
If Anderson reverts to Mullin mode and points to the 2013 amendable date saying "a contract is a contract" then he's quickly going to find himself with a very angry and far less productive pilot group. The operation will suffer and we will be much more assertive and adversarial in the section 6 negotiations. What the captains write on the back of those "Thank-You" cards for our HVCs may not be what management was expecting.
I think that's why they're considering some "adjustments" prior to the amendable date.