tzskip- your point has been debated for almost a year. The process agreement was followed- and several of us warned against alpa's conflict of interest (ie: ALPA having no motivation to facilitate things smoothly) and especially against playing hardball with SWA mgmt- you were warned- hundreds of times on this site alone- "don't do it, the culture isn't all rainbows and unicorns-" that was a seriously self-serving vote and you guys got a lesson in the real SWA culture- do the right thing and you will get more love and security from an employer than you ever thought you could- do wrong, be self-serving and prideful, lack humility- and for the sake of the company, they will act in the best interests of SWA when dealing with you. And that won't go well for you. In this deal specifically AT pilots seemed to overwhelmingly reject our roles as leaders in the integration- and this is what motivated herb and Colleen. I hope people truly get that THIS WAS NOT JUST ABOUT US AS PILOTS. As the first to go through the process, we needed to set the example and follow through on GK's VERY CLEARLY STATED DESIRE TO HAVE THIS INTEGRATION BE NEGOTIATED- did you think he was kidding?? The simple fact was that ATALPA was manipulating the process, dragging their feet, and acting dysfunctional in many ways- the cold business facts are that this deal becomes much less profitable and damaging to the culture if EVERY employee group drags out their integrations to the length of their PAs. This was stated over and over by me and many others here- But you didn't believe us or GK. Thought we were just "playing hardball". Well.....
To Lumberg's point- yeah, it's their fault for not knowing they were on a tricycle and GK is in an armored car- we all asked very publicly why they would think they could hold our culture hostage, try to use it as leverage, "better give us everything we want or your culture is ruined(!)" <- that line was used here on FI- it's still echoed by some of the bad attitudes here on both sides-
It's long over- this suit is probably silly- but things would have gone down much differently had AT pilots been allowed to vote-
But here's the bright side- this probably won't get traction- and this whole SWA acquiring AT deal will be judged much more clearly in 5 & 10 years, than right now-
Now's the time to zen out and go with the flow- my guess is we all have a really bright future- change is change. The pain being experienced is the resistance to that change. And it's 100% voluntary. Let it go.
