Those were sad times.. we had a chance to nip the "regional" whipsaw and subsequent boom in RJ's and keep mainline growing for meaningful, good paying jobs at that time due to a lot of understanding at DAL as to our "common" interest.. However, ONEALPA and a few other things have since squandered that trust and mutual respect.
Allow me to unburden you from that idea.
We didn't create ONEALPA until the spring of 2000 after Comair was purchased. The Comair and ASA MECs were doing due diligence by trying to engage Giambusso in talks about merging but it was going nowhere. We were being ignored.
Had we not done anything, the results would have been the same. By the time we launched ONEALPA and the PID, we literally had nothing to lose. We tried to do the right thing in accordance with ALPA's admin manual and were rebuffed at every turn. So we brought it to the Executive Council. The DMEC spent a wad of their own money to hire an outside lawfirm to speak against the PID and ALPA shot it down.
But make no mistake, the Delta pilots may exhibit the "understanding" you speak of to your face but at the negotiating table, they slam us. For example, Delta pilots go out of their way to say that the reduction of Comair travel benefits is exclusively the doing of management. But when Comair and ASA got these benefits in the first place, the DMEC
filed a grievance so management has always been quite clear about how they really feel.
When Comair started doing the Shuttle service, the Delta pilots picketed. They had ALPA file a lawsuit in court against Delta INC. Comair was wholly owned and the pilots were ALPA too! Now Republic, an independant contractor - not ALPA, is taking over a huge chunk of Shuttle and we hear nothing. So revenue dollars are not just going off the property but outside the union as well. I don't know about you but this strikes me as irrational anti union behavior.
My assertion to you is that everything would be the same today had we done nothing in 2000.