Afterthought on this...Well, it depends. Are you taking that measurement organically or are you taking it in the wake of an ERP, the likes of which has never been seen and while in the midst of a pandemic? If the answer is the latter then the number is likely going to be considerably higher and more significant in the vote count as it is now. To date, 78 on the active PAFCA list have pulled the trigger on the ERP and that's a lot of votes.

 

Right. That's why it sure appears they are trying to tank the deal so they can claim its the (only other) union's fault.

With such a high percentage of sudden early outs, there is no reason to set it up so they are forced to vote for their own short term pay cut or not. While I'd like to think they would do the altrustic thing to help a significant number of their brothers and sisters, its bogus that such a decision is forced upon them in the first place, as it sure seems its been intentionally set up for "optics" likely over the FA union fetish.

 

Nail meet hammer, hammer meet head. This is it EXACTLY.

 

If you are taking an early out wouldn’t abstaining from the vote be the obvious choice?

 

Here’s what I don’t understand about management’s approach to the whole unions issue. They’re spending so much time worrying about the optics between the pilots and the non-cons, isn’t the comparison between the non-con work groups and their counterparts at other airlines even more important? Comparing pilots to FAs to mechanics etc. is comparing apples to oranges. Management and those work groups should be paying more attention to how management at other airlines is treating their own work groups. Example: non-con hours have been reduced here by roughly 20% since March. UAL proposed something similar to their mechanics union and they said “no”. Heck, AAL’s mechanics ratified their new contract and received a raise the same day the CARES Act was signed.

My point is this... Depending on how the next 6 months plays out with furloughs, layoffs etc., I think unions for non-cons at Delta are highly likely in the next 3-5 years, regardless of managements efforts to paint us as the bad guys. If the non-cons do avoid furloughs and layoffs then maybe not, but if any of them are laid off after taking a 20% reduction in hours for 6+ months, then unionizing is pretty much inevitable IMO; and it will have nothing to do with what our group did/did not give, and everything to do with the comparison of how their peers at other airlines were treated.

 

You’re close but you’re focusing on it being a pilots vs. non-cons issue and it’s not. The apples and oranges comparison in this instance exists between the two organized entities on property and the rest of the workgroups. The company does not want an organized workgroup to be able to negotiate a better path forward that the company wouldn’t have done for the non-cons on their own. There is almost an absolute certainty that there will be furloughs in EVERY workgroup, the extent of which depends on several factors of course but it is an inarguable imperative to Delta that neither ALPA nor PAFCA be able provide furlough protection for their membership, it’s the line they must defend and they will. Heck, they just killed the deal they were working on with the Dispatchers for exactly this reason.

 

First I’ve heard this? What’s the rest of the story?

 

The plan they took to their membership for memrat included furlough protection until June something or other of 2021. That was on 03 Jul. Sometime over the last few days it became "whoops, miscommunication on our part, protection until 31 Dec" which coincidentally (not at all) is exactly as long as the vote for 25% reduction in hours lasts. The raw fact is that they simply do not want either represented group to negotiate a "better" deal than they are going to hand out to the non cons who are making the most noise (FA's, ACS) about organizing.

 

Always keep your deals?

 

I seem to recall reading something about that somewhere? Rules of the Road was it? That thing we spent God-knows-how-much on printing on heavy stock gloss paper to hand out to every Delta employee that we apparently no longer care about? I'm pretty sure that was it...