It was a good turnout. I would have liked to see even more, but I would think that the numbers were what the union was hoping for. We got an update on the talks. No big news there. They did make it sound like we were done to the money. The "underbrush" of the contract....not my word..just a quote...was pretty much done and now we are down to getting the company to pull out their checkbook. The emails that have been flying around saying that there have been no new sections TA'd were played down a bit by saying that many of the sections didn't need a TA since both sides were happy with the current contract on that section. They reviewed the possible roads that we could end up walking down......The company comes to the table and we get our contract....They do what they are doinig now and we end up looking for release from the NMB and start a 30 day cooling off .....and finally not to be surprised by a direct offer from the company.
The next part of the meeting was a review of how much money this company is making and the economic impacts that strikes have had on other carriers. (UPS, United, ect) The bottom line was that the company is making huge cash and they can't afford to have a work action screw up the growth. It was basically alot of powerpoint graphs to let everyone know that we do have some power in this situation.
The final part was the Willson center review of all of the phone interviews of the crew force. Overall great numbers. They showed the almost everyone is ready to walk if requiered. They are still trying to get everyone to trust each other that the next guy will hold the line when it gets ugly. Nothing new there from the last big rally last year on the numbers other than they showed more guys ready to walk if need be.
That's about it for the rally. Overall, I thought it was good. Like I said, I would have liked more people there, but that's just me. Everyone else seemed to think it was an outstanding turnout.