What I think is really weird is the fact that the Jet Blue Pilots Association hasn't used the fact of this "Values Committee" to petition the NMB for union status.
"Values Committees", or any other type of committee that is company sponsored and takes the place of union duties is a "de facto" admission that the workforce is unionized.
It doesn't even take a card vote to certify, the NMB can (and has) simply said, "If it walks and talks like a union, it is a union."
That's why so many companies are loath to give any power to employee committees--they get socked with a representation decision they don't want if they cross the line between advisory and proto-union constructs.
JBLU already has a union on its property.
It's not a stretch to say that the presence of a standardized written contract with the pilots, the presence of a values committee (what does "PVC" stand for anyway?) and other assorted "if you had a union, they'd be doing this for you, we'll just do it so you don't feel you need a union" tidbits add up to a union on the property.
In my view, and I studied quite a bit of labor law in college, Jet Blue already is unionized and is only a hair's breadth away from certification as such.
If the company bends over so far backwards to give you what a union would give you to keep a union off the property, it can run the risk of going too far and being considered a company-sponsered union.
There's a lot of case history of this, but it's mostly a long time ago, but the case history is why so many companies avoid anything that looks like a company-sponsored union. They start out trying to do good, then oops, they created their own union on the property.
