aftershock

Six years ago the Wiedemer brothers accurately predicted the crash of 2008 and the end of the housing bubble. The response to this financial crisis by our government has caused ancilliary issues; far greater and more far reaching. The "quantitative easing" (or rampant money printing) has served to ease the pain temporarily, but at a cost of a far greater problem in years to come.
Why do you care? How does this affect you?
These same writers now have a blueprint for the coming inflation. Along with this inflation, this devaluation of our currency, we will see economic contraction (as we are already seeing) and that will directly affect you. Jobs will be lost. Companies will fail. It could easily be your company, or your job.
The survivors of this crisis are the ones who position themselves early, so that the inevitable hardships can be dealt with in a reasonable fashion. Our economy IS shrinking in real terms. If it was rolling along OK American Airlines would not have gone bust. Sure, you can blame the arrogance of the pilots in insisting that their A fund was preserved (and it DID indeed create an unlevel playing field between them and United/Delta), but in a booming economy even that would have been manageable. So the first rumblings of imminent hardship are being heard if you pay attention.
So what?
We are at the best time, the most advantageous point, right now, to cut a deal. The longer we wait, the more valid reasons management will have to give us NOTHING. The longer we wait, the more numerous replacement pilots become available should we decide to execute a strike. Our position is being progressiveley undermined as the clock ticks. Urge your representatives to direct the negotiating committee to strike the best deal they can (and it MUST include competitively priced RJs because many of us will be bounced back to those in the coming contraction) RIGHT NOW.
We are coming up on two years of this self serving fiasco called "negotiations". The Treaty of Versailles took six weeks, and that was nations negotiating a lasting peace, not workers and managers trying to figure out how to make money.
Management has little incentive to rush things. Their position only gets stronger. The mediator has zero incentive. YOUR NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE is th only possible vehicle for expediting this process.
IF they truly represent your interests, then they should do that, NOW!