Actually quite well. My wages have gone up about 40% since we ratified the CBA four years ago. One of my good buddie's went up more than that over that same period. Also I can now go to work and not have to worry that I'll be called on the carpet if I make one little mistake, or piss off the wrong manager. I can call fatigue and tell them what time I'm willing to come back to work the next day without any repercussions. I know what my duty on time is for each work day and no one tries to call me in the middle of the night to make me start early. If I have a problem that I can't solve myself with a manager (rarely happens), I can call the steward on duty 24/7 and he will intervene on my behalf to help sort it out. At the end of the day I know my work rules, job protections and wages are all in writing, with an enforcement mechanism in place. I know my union is working hard every day to protect me and my fellow pilots and to enforce our contract so nothing changes at the whim of management like it so often did in the past.
That's like saying you'd file to an airport that's forecast to be below minimums, without an alternate within your fuel range and then say to your co-pilot, "Hey we'll deal with it when we get there."
But I'm not wrong, I've been working at this company for 14 years and I know exactly what our collective senior management is capable of. This is all just business for them. They'd cut you in a heartbeat right now if they didn't need something from you.
We don't want you to fail. We want all of us to succeed together, because that's the only way it can happen in this situation. We are very afraid that you've made up your minds, based of information fed to you by your managers, without the benefit of having taken the time, or making an effort to get the other side of the story. We are also afraid that when the critical moment arrives you will have just kept your heads down, failed to get the information you needed to make an informed decision, and will do just as you said, "roll the dice on the status quo".
Then, after you've given up all the leverage you currently hold, which stems from the fact that KR needs your no vote, he cuts your pay, changes your schedules and otherwise ruins your work life and we will be along for the ride with you. I wonder how long it will take for him to purge the ranks of the FO pilots of all those who had the courage to stand against him in the past.
What a happy bunch we will all be! We few, we lucky few, we... Oh never mind.
Everything that you described that's in your CBA we have here, too. Just because we don't have a union CBA doesn't mean we're just some two bit 135 operator tied to pagers 24/7. In my years at two different airlines, both with an ALPA CBA, the work rules and protections that we have here are better than we had there. Flexjet has never called me on an off day but the airlines did. And if you answered, you were hosed. I get that you guys have been through a lot and I hate it for you all. Another fact is that we all didn't just make up our minds last September when the purchase announced. Everyone here has been here plenty long enough and/or had previous experience prior to Flexjet that I believe most everyone already had an opinion on the matter. To say that we need to be informed isn't accurate. Just because we differ in opinion doesn't mean we need to be informed. Maybe we are informed and that's why we hold the opinions that we do. And if anyone isn't "informed" after reading nearly a thousand posts on this thread then you might as well give it up. I'm not done arguing for my point of view but I am done trying to convince the other side. With any luck, we'll never merge with one another and we can just stay out of each other's hair. Because if the rest of the FLOPs pilots behave in this manner in the cockpit, I think I'll just pass.