Wave,
So you are saying GK has honored even one agreement with us. PA = lie. Transition bid = lie. 717's more cost effective after SLI 1 didn't pass and would stay a bit longer = lie. 717 base TBD = lie. Everyone awarded 717 would have to fill that seat before transition = lie. These are just a few off the top of my head. I can't think of one part of any agreement that has not been reneged on.
I know what you believe depends upon what side you view it from. You may feel it is okay for GK to do this. But we on the AAI side feel like we were wronged so off to DRC. Time will tell if the cases have merit.
There's a world of difference between something not going the way you thought/wanted/expected, and it being a lie. For instance, the oft-repeated claim that "Southwest screwed AirTran by not following the Process Agreement." Above you listed it as one of GK's "lies." Good God, Driver, have you even
read that agreement?
GK said from the beginning that he wanted this to be done in-house, with every pilot getting to vote on an agreement. In the PA preamble (all the "whereas" stuff), it talks about M-B and the ultimate process of binding arbitration. However, it next mentions the "alternative ways" other than arbitration (i.e. negotiation) to accomplish this, and the next whereas states that
all sides, including ALPA, "
desire[d]" to accomplish an SLI using these ways other than arbitration. Do you think the AirTran ALPA MEC really desired this?
More importantly, in the actual meat of the PA, after it talks about how the sides were going to accomplish this negotiation to an agreement, it says that after such an SLI agreement is reached: "
SWAPA and ALPA agree to submit the complete agreement to their respective memberships for ratification" (PA Section II (c) (ii)). Did that happen? No. Did ALPA live up to what they agreed to in the Process Agreement? Looks like 'no' to me. A SLI agreement was reached through negotiation, and one side failed to honor their PA commitment by
not sending it to their membership for ratification.
In fact some AirTran ALPA members have intimated that they wanted arbitration from the beginning. One even was actually quoted on this forum as saying that he didn't want the AirTran pilots voting on the agreed-upon first deal; he was afraid they would vote yes, and he wanted arbitration because he thought he could get more. That is clearly against the
spirit of the PA, where everyone agreed that they "desired" a negotiated agreement. More importantly, it specifically violated the
letter of the PA, where both sides agreed to send a negotiated SLI agreement to their members.
You might want to think about that, before you blindly pass off what happened with the Process Agreement as a "GK lie."
Bubba