This statement is repeated so often, it shocks me. It is patently false. The people DAL uses at the negotiating table are the same people that show up there every time an LOA is negotiated. Every one of them is a company employee. There is no "powerful negotiating law firm" anywhere to be found.

Just setting the record straight.

Thank you. I get tired of hearing that mantra as well. It's the same at CAL. The same VP of Labor Relations and all the minions associated with the various departments who the contract pertains to (i.e. Flight Ops) show up at the table. ALPA shows up at the table with the staff attorney assigned to the airline.

Before the pilots can negotiate anything, I really think that we need to get our own in-house affairs in order.

The management has no incentive to negotiate fairly. We can scream up and down until we're blue in the face about how we deserve a fair contract, how we need to restore our 'profession', how we are underpaid, and it won't get us anywhere.

Things are so stacked against labor, that until we get our own house in order, forget tackling restoring the profession.

We often tend to confuse management and personalities with business.

Things are stacked against business and it hurts all of us, labor and customer included.

Ticket tax, about 16% right off the top(Airline Ticket Tax Project), then profits are taxed, then shareholders are taxed on their gains on taxed profits.

Labor gets squeezed along with business.

People often see the days of regulation as the good old days, but in fact they were days of highly selective protectionism, Pan Am being the perfect example.

One always imagines that if justice is served one will profit, but that only turns out to be true half the time and often at the cost of justice for all.

PG,

I agree with what your saying about the company employees at the negotiating table. However, I believe the direction and depth of the negotiations are essentially laid out by "consultants, for example, "Seabury Group" and then implemented by the negotiators, who have only a certain amount of room to negotiate.

Another common misunderstanding. Businesses aren't taxed as much as they collect taxes from consumers and then pass them along to the government. It's the consumer who is responsible for these.

Capitalism may have it's evils, but the alternatives will put the well-to-do in an even worse position. We are caught on the twin horns of pilot oversupply and rising tax rates that can easily consume up to 50% of your salary depending on your location.

There, fixed for ya.

Seriously, capitalism and socialism is far from black and white, this or that, no matter how much you like the neat and clean banners of such thinking. The reality is that the extremities at either end are equally insidious to society and freedom.

Exactly my point, and an excellent argument for dropping corporate taxes entirely.:D

It is not black and white, but we are running far closer to socialism than ever, and the historic results of socialism are piled in the junkyards of man's poorest ideas.

Centrally planned economies don't work. Never have, never will.

It boils down to the acceptance of unequal good fortune for most or abject misery for all.

How about Scandinavia?

Firm or not, they are good at what they do and certainly qualify as "powerful negotiators".