[kellwolf]

If management paid attention to economics, PCL and ASA wouldn't have to fight for over 5 years for a contract. I'm not at ASA, so I'll use PCL as an example.

We were/are $X amount of dollars apart over the life of the contract. That means, that if management plopped down $X, then they would be set for about 5 years. Rather than actually do that and move on, they chose to drag things out. What happens? Guys start jumping ship, telling their friends not to come here and FOs start applying elsewhere. I can give you a list a mile long of FOs that went from here laterally to another regional. That's wasted money in training costs right there. They spend upwards of $30K per FO only to see them leave in about 6 months to a year. Then they have to spend ANOTHER $30K+ on another new hire that MAY make it through training. Even put that aside, PCL paid more in penalities to NWA due to cancelled flights due to lack of staffing last year than we were apart on the contract. So, if they had signed the deal, WORST case scenario is they would have broken even since they wouldn't have had to pay the penalities since most guys would have stuck around, alleviating the staffing issue. Instead, they chose to dig in their heels so they wouldn't look like sell-outs to the rest of the airline management teams. It took Delta stepping in and saying "Look, this labor unrest is costing us $$$. Settle it." for ASA to get a contract.

I'll agree that management's job is to make $$$ for shareholders. But management will also bring in analysts to formulate reports showing productivity for themselves in order to justify raises for themselves. At the same time, they'll tell the labor groups in negotiations "There's not enough money to go around." Then they go out and buy another airline (which actually LOSES money over the year and is still bleeding cash) and more airplanes.