Kev,
DL141 did not ignore the membership's direction that scope protections are a priority. As it stands now, under current agreements, less than 20 percent of the IAM-represented membership at UAL possess scope protections. The rejected proposed contract extended scope protection to more than 20,000 out of the approximately 28,000 IAM-represented membership at United.
When you factor in the seniority based protections--no furlough for any reason if on the seniority list as of 7/1/1999 and no furlough due to outsourcing if on the seniority list as of 4/1/2006--then more that 90 percent of the membership attained protections they never had before.
The goal of collective bargaining is to improve current conditions for the group as a whole. Regarding job security, it is no debatable that the rejected proposed contract did that. However, the membership spoke and DL141 is back at the table to try and make changes to reflect the will of the membership.
The "red herring" that Brother Nelson uses is that we can achieve an infinite amount of gains. There will always be things that could be better. However, we should not make the perfect the enemy of the excellent.
I claim Brother Nelson is dangerous because there are many jobs at risk here and the "drumbeat of no" will only serve to have more people lose their jobs because they are not protected.
The point is, IAM DL141 made vast improvements for all regarding the issue of scope. Nelson says otherwise and he is completely wrong.