Yes. I believe you are correct as far as it was the FAA questioning some issues. It's part of the norm for a union to release a vote of no confidence when something like this arises. The pilots did it with one of our newly announced labor directors. Now that AMFA has done a vote, the co. puts a letter out.
The FAA started this about a week ago with the articles that surfaced about investigating into these issues.
His letter I do believe said that he was confident about getting a deal done in March. We will see if that ever happens. And your right, he probably does not realize the ridiculous asks in scope by the company and how much the ask affects the mechanics and our work loads. Until the company moves on scope there will be no agreement, and this I am hearing from many in discussions at work. Mike also does not realize that the co. offer does NOT include full retro like the pilots got for their back pay. Everything was just shuffled around to try and make their offer look better when in fact, it was lesser of a deal than the prior offer. Not gonna work with us. Make a true full retro offer in the bonus, make the snap up % match what it would have been, and make a decent offer of raise with these record upon record of profits all the while all flights still making gates and flights on time in a professional manner like we have had a contract for the last 6 years, I say it's time to reward the mechanics for keeping things going at status quo. The co. still has to move on their scope ask, they simply cannot just try to buy into it for the same average pay they have always given in the past.
I would expect that letter from Mike, any good leader would stand up for his own leadership below him as he did, I am sure that it made the employee feel a lot better to hear that from Mike.