A few yes guys I’ve talked to seems to boil down to something (3% 30mil)is better than nothing, and fear of the arbitrators ruling.

Can’t say I agree with any of their positions, but that’s just me.

Correct. One of many blatant deceptions from him. Like “the value of the NEA is only $100m in revenue a year,” despite joanna using the $100m as the initial cumulative revenue from the early stages of the NEA roll out, but saying that it will go up significantly. He intentionally misconstrued her words to add to his sales pitch. He’s a snake. And he’s misrepresenting us and ought to not only be recalled, but possibly sued. He’s either incompetent, corrupt, or possibly both. He’s intentionally deceiving members. F him. Worst MEC chairman I’ve seen in my life, and most harmful to the pilot group by a long shot.

This is such narrow vision, from I assume the military guys who understand scope about as well as they did 121 regs and flying into clouds. Just like they needed education about this, we need to educate them about scope. If it’s former regional pukes, like myself, I’m appalled that this is even a consideration, we should know better.
Established scope should never be sold for any price and especially to a legacy carrier which has a history of furloughing guys while giving away tons of flying to their regional feed and which is desperately near bankruptcy and looking to benefit from our stupidity. Please reach out to some no voters and understand scope a bit more, it can’t be retrieved once lost.

Jetblue pilots are the weakest pilots I have ever seen.

The fear of arbitrators ruling isn’t really clear to me. Who cares? So what if he doesn’t rule on our side (probably not). Nothing changes, cease and desist and if they continue to violate so be it, albeit our scope is still intact.

I’ve been told on a few occasions it’s just business, take something vs nothing and get ‘em back next time. Where have I heard that before…..

Just wait until we have to try and explain status and category, slide protection, percentage based integration, etc.

I think you guys better start warming up to the idea that this thing passes by 60-40 or more. I’d bet my next paycheck on it. Before anyone jumps my a$$, I did vote No.

you're losing me here. if the arbitrator doesn't rule in our favor, as in he doesn't rule that the company has violated the contract, as in he basically says, "this is fine, nothing to see here, nothing can be done", then the company can continue with the nea and in fact, can go sign more agreements that violate these same parts of the contract, because they have now officially gotten away with it. i'm not sure how that's no big deal? it seems like a big deal to me. would our scope still be "intact" at that point? it doesn't seem like it to me. it seems like it would have been punched through and torn apart, and we tried to do something about it, but failed, and the company can continue doing as they please.

however, like others have said on here (and what convinced me to vote no), is that if that does happen, at least it's the arbitrator doing it to us, and not us doing it to ourselves. we're not "giving up scope". scope is being taken away from us. that does mean something. we can say we fought and lost, but at least we stood our ground.

I think you guys are saying the same thing. What is the fear out there? Is the arbitrator going to take away our MLK holiday pay or make us do one more red-eye a month...no, but if you want to sell yourself out and give the Co permission to do this cr@p over and over again...vote yes.

It's a NO for me.

You're correct, it's a grievance settlement with relief for 1.F.7 and 1.F.8 and not a full in admission that an MGIA is a direct violation of 1.F.7. I'm sorry I spoke inaccurately. This is a complex issue and I'm clearly no lawyer, but as I understand it from our own, the company asking for relief from that language in this settlement sets a precedent should it happen again. That gives 1.F.7 some teeth and forces the company to consider the consequences of any further attempts to establish a similar commercial agreement. Legalese is difficult to decipher, so I'm listening to those reps and lawyers who we pay plenty of money to represent and inform us. If anyone believes there's a problem with the integrity of their conduct, then there's deeper issues here requiring remedial actions, but I'm not seeing that right now.

This is a murky situation without a clear path after either a 'Yes' or 'No' vote. Each one has its own unknown risks and uncertainties. But there are people here who are claiming the only way to protect scope is to vote 'No' and that's just not true for the reasons I explained in my original post. It is possible, should LOA 17 be voted down, the arbitrator gives us a clean sweep. If that happens I'll gladly eat crow and admit I was wrong. But even in that best case scenario there's an associated risk with potentially very serious negative implications should he rule in favor of the company on 1.F.7.

To reiterate, I feel the potential downside of voting 'Yes' on LOA 17 is mitigated by the collars and kill switch in B.3.b enough to outweigh the potential negative downsides of letting the arbitrator neuter a critical part of our scope language.

Looking at the upside of the equation, I see a 3% raise that's insufficient, but is an improvement that not only brings us up to, but above many similar rates at the big 3, that frees up negotiating capital to bargain for more gains in other areas of the CBA (perhaps stronger 1.F.7 language among other areas) and gives the pilot group a strong standing to fight for and earn a CBA in the upper echelon of all airlines, not just being tethered near the peer set group of Alaska, Hawaiian, etc., allowing us to see long term contractual gains as a result. This is the first round of that fight. We can fight that battle more effectively with LOA 17 and an NEA with an expiration date much better than we can if an arbitrator undercuts 1.F.7 and allows an MGIA to be rubberstamped into our other codeshare agreements.

Contract language matters because we make it matter. The company ignored parts of our CBA and we called them out on it and went through the process to rectify it. We've done it before and we'll do it again.

Arbitration is a process stacked in favor of the wealthy and powerful. 3A illustrated that for many of our pilots. Kasher did that for Alaska's. There's a reason many companies are forcing people to sign away class action lawsuit rights in favor of forced arbitration. It needs to be reformed and I'm all for fighting that fight, but LOA 17 isn't it. Unfortunately it's an imperfect system but we have no choice but to fight the hardest we can within the framework as it currently is, take the wins where we can, and get back up after a loss to fight again.
​​​​​​
​​