Sink r8

Your posts are usually better than this. Are you saying we don't know how to "man-up" when faced with similar circumstances?

When I look at how we fared just before, and just after BK, we did about the same. That is to say your end-result looked worse, but you kept your pension, as a consensus-building exercise I assume.

As you said yourself, above, except for C2K, your manning up yielded nothing exceptional. And C2K, of course, changed that. What teary-eyed non-manning-up group negotiated that? This group.

Let's not forget your strike. We were all proud of you, no doubt about it. Except you shouldn't factor out luck. It was explained to me by a North pilot you didn't strike so much as got locked-out, and the company was pre-packaged for sale (Pacific to AMR, I think it was). Planes were getting mothballed. The White House stepped in to let it be known the Pacific authorities were not going to get transferred, and threw some other big rock in management's puddle, and that was that.

This group, the entire Delta group, is just like most pilot groups. We will defend ourselves just as much, or just as hard, any group out there. Period. Want to man-up and build consensus? Start by not making broad, insulting assumptions about your brothers' motives. We're not motivated by fear: we're motivated by the desire to find what works best.

TenYearsGone

BTW, Hank was forced to quit because he told the CEO that DAL could afford to give the pilots a 72% pay raise and still be profitable.

TEN

Sink r8

Nor can we ignore the power of this company to generate cash.

scambo1

T;
They already did.

Also, IMO, a contract extension sounds good in a vacume, but really bad in the real world. If we extended the contract with small gains, that would be the contract we'd have to live with for the extended NMB induced drawn out contract - especially if Mgmt gets their way on a future acquisition.

We are (roughly) one acquisition from being done building the network. After that happens, Mgmt doesn't care about "happy labor."

Elvis90

Junior guys also have less to lose by leaving for more lucrative contracts, or to put it another way, they are not tied to one company as much as senior guys are.

I like Delta, I enjoy going to work, and I enjoy the quality individuals I work with. I just want to be appropriately compensated, and what is "appropriate" right now is the point of contention.

Kingbird87

I'm okay with whatever works, and if it's "constructive engagement", detached negotiation, or walking up and down the front of the terminal with with a placard. The toolbox needs to have more than one tool in it. If the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon every problem starts looking like a nail. I value the positive results of constructive engagement, and I realize confrontation is a last resort. But it needs to be a viable resort. Have you been to a strike committee meeting or organizational event lately? I haven't. I never remember any animosity between employee groups at NWA, we were all unionized and as such the spectacle of what frequently occurred in public during contract negotiations at Delta never occurred. We were always pulling for you, and to see the company and the non-union line employees creating farcical events to disrupt your negotiations was unnerving. I do remember getting my meals on a plate, but I haven't seen anything but "little friskies" canned mush and crackers lately.

tsquare

How has SWAPA EVER furthered the state of the industry? Was it that 10 year contract they signed back in the 90s? Was it negotiating a less than industry leading pay rate (at the time) Or was it by bending over the AT pilots, thus invalidating Bond McCaskill? Yeah.. THAT must be it..

DAL 88 Driver

Good. That would be a hard point to argue. (Although I'm sure Sailingfun, Slow, or Alfa would give it a try.)

Now that is where you go off the rails IMO. There is no rule in business that says the costs of an employee group at one company have to equal the costs of the same employee group at another company. SWA is a good example of that. They pay their pilots almost 50% more than Delta pays its pilots doing comparable flying. Yet SWA is profitable and has consistently been profitable.

Some companies consider higher compensation to be a strategic advantage. They recognize the many intangibles that help the bottom line when you attract the best people to work for you and they are motivated (and rewarded) to give you and your customers their absolute best.

I wouldn't invest in an industry (or a company in an industry) that has lost more money over its history than it has ever made. So to answer your question... No. I wouldn't invest in DAL stock whether it paid its employees top dollar or its employees worked for free.

Now, as far as what other investors (who are dumb enough to invest in airline stock) would do. I think it is up to Delta management to make decisions that are in the best interest of the business. A big part of running a quality, successful company is taking care of your employees who in turn take care of your customers. It's up to management to make the right decisions for the business and then, if that raises questions with some investors, communicate the reasons for their business decisions and sell the investors on what we are doing to maximize the quality and long term success of this company. It's not a hard case to make. That's what the "Director of Investor Relations" is for.

Respectfully, I submit that you are looking at it from only the cost side of the business equation. There is much, much more to running a business than controlling costs. Don't get me wrong. Cost control is important. But it is not the end all and be all of running a business. IMO there has been way too much focus on cost to the detriment of doing what is in the best interest of the business and its customers. We're in the era of "bean counter management." It's a fad that, unfortunately, we are having to live through right now. I generally don't do predictions... but I predict that one day this era of over infatuation with cost (to the exclusion of other equally or more important things) will be used in business textbooks as an example of a colossal failure and a clear example of how not to do it.

Bill Lumberg

Exactly. Sailing might be the ALPA appointed board member that gets Stockholm Syndrom listening to possible future plans at the airline and then volunteers our pay to fund it. Paying pilots more is the cost of doing business. We gave up a lot in BK, and now it's time to restore a lot of it. Sailing likes to do management's job.....manage expectations.

Kingbird87

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