flhtrider

Forget it! 1224 is the bomb!

av8or

I was always under the impression that negotiations ALWAYS involve BOTH sides swapping something they feel is NOT beneficial to them for something they DO...sooo I guess in that regard ALL contracts are "give backy"....but maybe I'm wrong. We felt the pay increases and job guarantees and retro NOW, were a better deal than the lawsuit, (that would have been settled much sooner had ABX mgmt not boondoggled the whole thing by trying to claim our contract wasn't covered by the RLA)

THAT being said...more power to you guys over there....hey....when's the next picketing?

hvydriver

I have now copyrighted "Give Backy". All who use it from this point owe me 1 beer of my choice for each time it is used.

Whistlin' Dan

The so-called pay "increases" and job "guarantees" weren't really "gains" in the overall scheme of things, but merely distractions that led rank-and-file attention away from the real "give back" in the contract, which was SCOPE. Without it, nothing else matters. For long, anyway.

Certain members of the negotiating team tried to warn the pilot group of the problems, but by and large, the pilots didn't want to hear it. All they wanted to know was how much money they were going to get, and how soon they were going to get it. I doubt there were a dozen who actually read the proposed contract in it's entirety before certain issues relating to scope were raised on this board. But they all knew how much their "retro check" was going to be. Most of 'em had it spent even before it turned up on their pay stub.

All negotiations involve tradeoffs, but successful negotiations are accomplished from a position of strength. For a number of reasons, that was NOT the position the negotiating committee found itself in at the time the proposed contract was being formulated. They did the best they could under the circumstances, but ultimately, it was the pilots themselves who signed their own death warrant.

DC8DRIVER

Is this jealousy, or are you seriously insinuating that somehow we have "lowered the bar" during our last negotiations because we traded one protection for another and because we settled for a "bonus" vs. " full retro pay"?

C'mon Red. All negotiations involve concessions. All airline pilots know this and to deny this fact is clearly wrong.

Any pilot contract negotiation at any airline could have a better (or a worse) outcome. Contract negotiators from both sides do the best they can to satisfy those whom they represent. Simply by design, no side of an airline contract negotiation gets all the benefits they want and every side grants "concessions" they would rather keep. It is up to the negotiating team and ultimately the pilot group to decide if the "concessions" are worth the benefits.

It getting very tiresome defending our contract against cries of "race-to-the-bottom" by your girl Trixie and now this "concession" slander about our scope provision (which, by the way, was not a lawsuit, but a contractual grievance - hence there was no "lawsuit" that was dropped).

The ironic part of all of your insinuations and insults is that we have a signed contract that gives us a twenty percent raise over the life of the contract, no furlough protection, and growth provisions that contain financial penalties to the company if not fulfilled. As a result of this contract, we have just received our most recent pay raise and more importantly, all of our pilots are still on the payroll - not on the street.

I would suggest that you concentrate your considerable editorial talents into putting your own contractual house in order and doing what you can to better the lives of your fellow ABX pilots rather than spending all your time belittling those that have had the successes that you, so far, have failed to achieve.

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DC8DRIVER

And how did you spend your bonus check, Jim? Oh, that's right ... you didn’t get one because you haven't been an airline pilot since you were fired for staying in bed too many times when you were supposed to be on the job and flying airplanes! Or was it the multiple failed check rides that sent you to the streets? Oh, that's right. It was both!

Since all that was years ago, perhaps you would be more credible if you stuck to issues of which you have first hand knowledge and refrain from slandering our success because of your bitterness and failures.

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