What harm will it do? Well, let's see. Should the union vote fail:
1) We remain naked should we be sold, merged, or aquired - we will be open to the same abuse the pilots received the last time that happened, and who knows - it could be worse. If we are aquired, and the buyer only wants our aircraft, they could refuse to hire our pilots, or force us to interview for the same job we have.
2) Ken Ricci gave us the "give us a chance" speech to torpedo the LAST union drive that RTA lost by only 14 votes. We gave him a chance. And it has been 3 painful, suffering years of losing benefits, pay, seniority, unfair seniority practices, and a loss of quality of life issues to include domiciles, crew meals, poor crew rest management, and abuse on day 8 travel, for starters. I could write a 10-page article on the QOL issues alone.
3) We may get some sort of crappy compensation package like Flex Jet did. It will NOT address the most important things such as crew rest management (the crap about after 10 hrs of rest having to answer your phone in rest or going over 16 hours on day 8), overtime, holiday pay, a real crew meal policy, nor will we get the protections a union affords us when being disciplined by management, involved in an aircraft incident or accident, check rides and IOE upgrades, or whistle blowing. Not to mention, at the first opportunity, such as the changing of the guard at the CEO level or the first financial report that "shows us at a loss", the company can TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING it gives us in this pay package and state "due to the current market conditions we can't afford to maintain the benefits package awarded in Q1 of 2006", and we are back to the same pay. Remember. The last 3 CEO's all took stuff away from us that was promised by the previous CEO. SFO program, CLE domicile incentive pay, tier 3's, crew meal policy, the list goes on.
4) Should the vote fail, it will literally be days before it will be "business as usual", and the crap continues. We will stop being called "team members", and will again be "crew members" or "just the pilots".... and we won't be able to petition for a minimum of 12 months.
What do we have to lose? A hell of a lot. We already are losing 20% of our pilots annually. If this vote fails, it will probably double. This company won't be worth working for if this vote fails. We have a lot to lose indeed.