For some reason, I haven't been able to post.
But here's my take on things:
I thought that this election would be closer, but the majority spoke. People just wanted their money, and a lot more are tired of fighting, since IMHO we weren't going to get a better deal. Due to the bad economy, some scope would be relinquished, and I didn't like it. Especially from a bankruptcy contract. But there was an element of fear because you had a majority of members not protected in any form, and the company was going to go forward with plans, especially on the sCO side. So a lot of us had mixed emotions about this deal because we really wasn't going to gain very much financially from it. It was basically to raise up sUA. But the main focus was job protection in some form. With the insourcing slated to happen, and the early out numbers reached for some groups, we won't know what happens next.
737823 said:
Yes Kev you know full well I have been an active participant in this discussion. Face it the IAM wanted the dues and used coercion and fear tactics to collaborate with UA to get the job done. Tim did the honorable thing educating people about the dangers of this. And now it has lowered the bar for everyone at other carriers, AA will probably look to whittle down 17 protected stations, DL may do the same too. Just wondering as a DL employee do you worry about the security of your station and it being vendored out?
Josh
It was going to happen anyway, slowly or fast that a bunch of stations would be vendored out. So it might be by the time this contract is expired, about 35 or so +/- left. It will lower the bar for everybody else, so to speak, but DL and AA have their own outsourcing arms anyway, so that is automatic cost savings for both carriers. Plus getting the dues from sCO ATW is was a main factor for the IAM as well. But the fight to continue wasn't there. Sadly, eventually it was gonna happen anyway, since the pilots sucked the air out of the room for everybody else. The MX will be coming back to the table after this; and from what I hear, the FA's are still miles apart, so they will have to overpay them to get them together. This month's quarterly P/L statement didn't help things either. We are still working as two airlines, and the so called 'efficiencies' aren't taken into affect yet. Mostly due to management decisions: the gutting of sUA's smaller M/L fleet (the 737); and the overreliance of 50 seaters - sCO, which leaves us at a disadvantage on the domestic front. Plus when US leaves for AA, there will be a bigger hole in the network as well.
737823 said:
Of course but if it were DL you would be all over it and how they intimidate people, use fear tactics, etc.
You conveniently skipped over the rest of my post above, the IAM screwed this up big time. sUA should have had an agreement before the joint agreement. The district gave away tremendous leverage by doing this, they were happy to collaborate with UA in the hopes of getting dues payers sooner by pursuing a joint agreement first. So the IAM won in early March 2012 and they just now got an awful contract full of concessions that lacks scope. That's not nearly as long as IAM at US or negotiations at AA dragged on, 700 et al keep insisting the RLA allows company to prolong the process, 18 months for a joint CBA actually isn't all that bad. Again all the pay rates and enhanced vacation & holidays may look nice on a summary sheet but w/o scope it is insignificant.
Josh
That's the main reason why we are in this situation. They didn't get a deal for sUA before going into joint negotiations. That should have been the main goal at the time, bring them up in pay, and then negotiate jointly, since we at sCO already had a deal (albeit a bad one).
I don't have the breakdown in stations, but my station had a pretty decent turnout (for a station where it notorious for not voting for anything), mainly on the ramp side. From what I hear, the majority of us voted "No". But I heard that ORD and IAH was overwhelmingly a "Yes" vote. Some of the bigger line stations was a "Yes" vote as well. I didn't think that the union will break it down, but someone like Tim would know the true numbers.
We are in for a bumpy ride now. Next issue is the seniority list............