Possible SWA T.A. pay numbers... Embrace the suck.

[-9Capt]

-9, So better than DOH...closer to relative...well that would have been an exceptional deal for the AAI guys, especially all the CPs...RSW not so much...so in the world of arbitrated airline mergers it's better to be on the smaller, less profitable and ultimately purchased airline side...-9, you wanted an arbitrated deal because you believed it would net u a higher number on the SWA list...and well for the guys who left AAI for SW and for all the RSW too bad...should have left SW for a smaller, all round crappier airline gig and then hope to get purchased by a bigger, more profitable airline, especially if you can be a CP at the smaller, crappier airline...got it...

What?
You're making massive assumptions and putting words in my mouth. I didn't say or infer any of that. However there is a reason swapa went to great lengths to avoid arbitration.

 

[-9Capt]

Just answer the question is all I ask. You posted an article about Southwest threatening a "plan-B". In that very article two industry analysts described it as a "ploy" and a "negotiating tactic". Do you believe SWA could have carried through with the threat of separate operation discussed in the article without a major violation of SWAPA scope?

Honestly I don't give a crap either way. Eventual integration was a foregone conclusion and the threats to the contrary were obvious BS...a negotiating ploy

 

[HowardBorden]

Eventual integration was a foregone conclusion and the threats to the contrary were obvious BS...a negotiating ploy

I absolutely agree, thanks for the seemingly honest response. So if it was a ploy, where does that squarely place the blame for succumbing to common management fear tactics? Trust me when I say there is plenty of blame to go around on BOTH sides.

 

[-9Capt]

I absolutely agree, thanks for the seemingly honest response. So if it was a ploy, where does that squarely place the blame for succumbing to common management fear tactics? Trust me when I say there is plenty of blame to go around on BOTH sides.

I getting a bit tired of discussing this but...

your scope means nothing. Swapa would've signed away those rights in half a second if management promised to slowly dismantle AirTran, take their assets, furlough their pilots and grow SW organically with the assets aquired from airtran.

All of this is meaningless speculation...my point is...your scope was completely irreverent with respect to the threats and ultimatums.

The real issue here is what the Frog mentioned. Swapa has no real leverage in contract negotiations. That's the current problem.

 

[SWA Bubba]

What?
You're making massive assumptions and putting words in my mouth. I didn't say or infer any of that. However there is a reason swapa went to great lengths to avoid arbitration.

Talk about making assumptions. Or rather, inventing "facts."

SWAPA didn't go to any lengths at all, "to avoid arbitration." The company did. I know you'd like to pretend that you don't remember, but Gary went out of his way to let both sides know, before any of this started, that HE wanted to avoid arbitration, and come up with a negotiated, voted-on SLI. He strongly reminded both sides, multiple times, that was what HE wanted. It was even memorialized in the Process Agreement that, "both sides desire a negotiated settlement." I suspect that it was his intention all along to create the SLI framework, have the union NCs fill in the details, and then have both sides vote. He couldn't have possibly telegraphed it any more clearly.

And that's exactly what happened. He also authorized SWAPA CBA pay immediately, despite the AirTran side not being efficient enough to rate that pay (plus FAT captains keeping their seats, regardless of seniority), as a big carrot for the AirTran side. When your MEC, working under ALPA mentality, refused to send it for a vote because they had planned on waiting it out to force arbitration, I'm guessing that pissed him off. He probably saw it as "bad faith," since AirTran ALPA agreed in writing that they "desired a negotiated settlement," when in reality, they had no such intention. Hence the seemingly punitive provisions in the second agreement.

Now enter you and other malcontents. Since you're ALPA, you're required to hate management already, so it's not as satisfying to blame them. They're supposed to be adversarial. Instead you invent this grand conspiracy, with no actual evidence, and despite every actual event that transpired, just so you actually have a bogeyman to blame. This way, you get to blame other pilots for "screwing you over."

Sorry dude, you can keep running your mouth about a "conspiracy" if it makes you feel better, but that's not the way it happened.

Bubba

 

[SWA Bubba]

Correct.

Pilot integration is different.

Always has been.

There are factors involved like mandatory retirement age and CA vs FO that other employee groups don't have to consider. A flight attendant is a flight attendant, a mechanic is a mechanic. A pilot is an FO or a CA with a known retirement date. See? Different.

Sure, it's different. But rules (like mandatory retirement ages) that apply equally to every pilot on both lists mean less than diddly-dick in regards to what' an arbitrator would consider a "fair SLI list." Everyone has to retire at 65. An arbitrator wouldn't bump one side's pilots up (at the expense of the other side) based on a universal retirement age.

PCL's idea of "ratio by category and status" (essentially an SLI list of relative seniority) really only applies to arbitration when merging two "equal groups." Thats the rub, of course, because that idea is so subjective. Other things are considered: career expectations, strength of contract, company financials, just to name a few. This is why there was such a huge divergence from "ratio by category and status" in the AWA-USAir arbitrated list. While the difference between our two carriers wasn't nearly so stark, there were differences that would have been taken into account by an arbitrator. So PCL's insistence that any arbitration would certainly yield relative seniority is nothing but self-serving, BS speculation.

And since the differences between pilots and other work groups generally mean absolutely nothing when it comes to "fairness," I suspect a arbitrated pilot list would look strikingly similar to other work group arbitrated lists, between the same two carriers.

Bubba

 

[PCL_128]

Holy crap, you're smoking something.

 

[Freebrd]

He's smokin' Bunkled crack! And it's affecting him/her.

 

[SWA Bubba]

Holy crap, you're smoking something.

Wow. Amazing rebuttal.

You gonna actually explain? Gonna offer any proof of your perceived "conspiracy"? Gonna rebut Gary's actual pre-negotiation comments and how they related to his actual subsequent actions? And If you want to believe (and argue) that the two carriers were "equal" in terms of how an arbitrator would decide, well then, that's your right. However, other work groups' arbitrators thought differently than you, and made lists that accounted for inequality. Can you explain why a pilot arbitrator would do anything differently? Explain why he would ignore all that, and give one side a boost (at the other side's expense), just because we're pilots and have to all retire at 65?

Or don't; whatever. Just keep making your unsupported platitudes, and your omniscient statements of exactly how it would have gone down. Just because you were an ALPA wonk, and after all, you just know how it always works.

Bubba

 

[27 driver]

Just answer the question is all I ask. You posted an article about Southwest threatening a "plan-B". In that very article two industry analysts described it as a "ploy" and a "negotiating tactic". Do you believe SWA could have carried through with the threat of separate operation discussed in the article without a major violation of SWAPA scope?

yes.....I do