MaxKts

How is my answer "avoiding the question"?

TonyC

I think there may have been a slight misunderstanding in your answer -- I had to reread it myself.

At first I thought you were telling AFW_MD11 to stop sugar coating and admit that they miscalculated. What I think you meant to say is, "I would Stop sugar coating ... and I would admit that they miscalculated..."

Correct me if I'm wrong.






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Busboy

Maybe those guys are betting on a dual 767(widebody pay)/757(NB pay) bidpack. And, think they can make the pay difference up with their higher relative seniority?

Or, it's just the usual practice bid buffoonery

AFW_MD11

My question was NOT what would you NOT have done (in the past.)

My question was what would you do NOW differently than we have done/are doing now.

Bonus question - how is it that you think we might be able to petition the NMB after just 2-3 months of formal negotiations? does this process work that way?

MaxKts - you sorta did "answer the question" by saying you would "stop sugar coating" things so we could move forward - p.s. I don't necessarily agree that the interim talks were a "waste of 2 years time!"

But, beyond that, I was wondering what, SPECIFICALLY, you would change or do differently GOING FORWARD than what we are doing/have been doing - which is move into formal Section 6 negotiations & try to complete that process as quickly as possible GOING FORWARD. What would you do or have our union leadership do differently than what they are doing now. That was the question that you really avoided answering.

MaxKts

I guess I should have started with:

If I were the MEC Chairman/Negotiating Chairman I would stop sugar coating ......


Is that better?

AFW_MD11

I understood what you meant the first time.

So, that being the case, sounds like you're pretty happy with everything else the MEC Chairman/Negotiating Chairman are doing now then - except to stop sugar coating the past?

Busboy

Guess I misunderstood the "do differently than we have done/" in your question.

Basically, you can petition the NMB anytime for mediation. But, according to our union leaders...It is a major plus for us that the NMB is very much on board with our approach(interim discussions) to negotiating our contract. I would take that to mean that once we did petition for mediation...The NMB would act to facilitate the conclusion of our negotiations. Otherwise, why would we give a crap what the NMB thinks of our interim talk method?

AFW_MD11

right....maybe I should have put "have done recently/are doing"...?

interesting, though....I just thought one party had to have a legit reason to petition the NMB, like - "look, we've been negotiating in good faith for 5 years, & the company has not...." - but not "look, we've been negotiating in good faith for 2 months & the company has not....."

I don't know if there is a minimum time or not, but I would think that X months would not fly vs. X years - just thought you might have more in-depth knowledge of the process to suggest that 2 months might be enough time for the NMB to intervene....seemed unusually short time when talking about a government bureaucracy.

I agree with the MEC that it IS a major plus that the NMB likes our approach & I think it will make them inclined to grant mediation - but after a more "appropriate amount" of stalling has occurred - whatever their definition of "appropriate amount" is?

MaxKts

Glad you did - obviously others didn't.

To the second part - I'm not happy we wasted 2 years but what other options do we have at this point?

TonyC

Two years ago, the question was often asked, "How will this affect our ability to get help from the NMB to close the deal?" We were told that we've talked to the NMB, and they like our Mid-Term Discussions / Interim Talks model, and we were assured that the NMB would give us credit for that time when considering whether to consider our case. ALPA's top labor attorney told us this process would have no bearing on the "proverbial clock" that begins when we open RLA Section 6 negotiations and must register a certain number of ticks and tocks before the NMB will give us the time of day. (Pun intended)

They weren't entirely wrong, because the issue is not so much time as it is the number of unresloved issues and the distance between the two parties, the gap between their positions. If we approach the NMB with dozens of unresolved problems in a dozen sections with a great chasm between us, the NMB will not be interested, because there's not much they can do for us.

However, when we've eventually plucked all the low-hanging fruit, we've cleared the underbrush, and all we have left is a narrow gap on a few key issues, the NMB can help by facilitating negotiations.

IF -- big if -- IF the Mid-Term Discussions / Interim Talks have been successful in facilitating agreement on a wide variety of issues so that we just have a few items remaining, and the gap between us and The Company is reasonably manageable, then the NMB should be willing to hear our case.


That's what we were told. I hope they were right.






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