You have to keep in mind that Sharon is employed by the International, therefore she looks out for the Interests of the people who employ her, the International. This process costs the Union a lot of money, part of the settlement is that the company will pay the Union millions of dollars should we vote YES, they lose nothing. They dont lose their pensions, work rules or work at the bottom of the industry for six more years either. Sharon is a lawyer, not a labor leader, today she is argueing our case tomorrow she could argueing the companys case, she creates and puts forth an arguement for whomever employs her. Right now its the International, and they want their money back and the way they will get their millions from AA is by getting us to give AA billions.
Another thing you have to remember is that Sharon would like nothing better than to see us give in to this, merge with USAIRWAYS and form a mega carrier with super low wage rates. Now United and Delta (and everyone else) would be at a huge disadvantage. With AA having established that you can claim possible future finincial hardship as a basis for going into C-11, even though you still have huge amounts of cash on hand, to void and impose labor agreements, there is nothing stopping Airlines that are makeing huge profits from filing as well. Lets say AA gets to their $3 billion a year mark and UA and DL are sitting at around $400 to $500 million, they can claim thjat since their profits are so much less than AA they wont be able to attract investment and need to make the profits of AA in order to insure their long term survival. For Sharon this means steady work, and steady income. The Unions will continue to make settlements where the company reimburses them for all the expenses involved, so they lose nothing and they all get rich while we continue to take their advice and get poorer and poorer.
Nobody is saying that we will get treated fairly in BK court, but BK court is not the end of the process. The way to speed things up is to slow things down, or stop them completely. That will land us in a different court, the court that screwed everything up in the first place when they said that 1167 does not apply to all workers under the RLA, the court that said that Airline workers, and only airline workers have to continue to work under a unilaterally changed contract, in direct contradiction to what the RLA says. If anyone thinks this is going to get fixed without massive disrupotions to the system you are dreaming. What did Mike Quill say 50 years ago? You have to fight for it!!