A good thread CPA81, well done for providing an alternative viewpoint. Personally, I feel that the strategy of "more of the same" ieo a NO vote is indicative of the lack of foresight and initiative we have as a union, both from a leadership and membership point. We did CC many years ago and yet we decided to use exactly the same tactics??!!! Beggars belief really. CC should always have been a "guerrilla style" warfare if it was going to be effective at all but we didn't and now we delude ourselves that it hurts the company more than us. The TB hurts us more than them because they have shown that they don't give a **** how poorly this company performs seeing as they operate to the same old Swire playbook - which is a failure in the modern age. So missing out on expansion is annoying for them but they are prepared to live with it as much as possible because no one up there on the 9th floor is really accountable for poor management decisions/strategy.
So what to do? It's a tough one. My personal belief after almost a quarter of a century here is that they are hoping to get the cheapest deal in return for harmony because they want to try to expand stress-free. HOWEVER, my gut feel is that if they don't get that deal signed, they are going to force through whatever spiny pineapple they are looking to achieve in the next few years anyway because they have found a way around the TB already. They just want a peaceful end to the TB rather than a messy "implemented" one.
This is HK and despite all that has been said, I really don't agree with the common viewpoint that upping IA is going to help us in any way (my opinion only and a minority one on these forums) because it is an employers' economy. Look around you, if you are a LEP cadet then I don't need to ask you to do that because you will already be aware of what working in HK is really all about.
What the company do to us and how they go about it is completely immoral and I hate them for that. But the reality is that unless you really are in a position to leave or are really prepared to lose your job over this by upping IA, then I would say that this has some slight improvements that as a local or new pilot, are probably worth accepting. There used to be a philosophy in negotiating - "take what you can and move on". By slightly upping the benchmark you start from a higher position when the next negs come around. We in the AOA seem to have lost that philosophy entirely and instead gone for the "all or nothing" route. As you pointed out - where has that got us exactly, because I haven't really seen any major improvements since CoS'99.
I'm not saying this is a good deal - it's not. What I am saying is that it's time to stop playing the mind-numbing "same old same old" game and perhaps take this and move on?