Well, it is early.
"Always vote no on the first deal" is the kind of conventional "wisdom" that passes around among pilots who have never negotiated anything bigger than a used car purchase. Billion dollar (or hundred million dollar) labor contract negotiations don't work like that. Now, granted, what happens at Skywest isn't really true negotiations, nor is it a true contract, but the same considerations should go into a yes or no vote. By the time there is something to vote on, the people doing the negotiating have passed countless proposals back and forth, argued endlessly, tinkered with the language over and over again until they're blue in the face, etc. It's
not a first deal. It's just the first thing you've personally seen. It's actually the result of a whole lot of hard fought wins on the part of your negotiating team. And they've brought it to you because they believe that any efforts to achieve more will result in you actually getting less because of the time value of money or other risk factors.
Now, that's not to say that you should never vote no. Sometimes, for example, the MEC (or equivalent body) has put in place a negotiating team that you think is dumb as a box of rocks and can't be trusted to make these kinds of determinations. I voted against a seniority integration at my last airline because the Merger Committee who negotiated it was in way over their head and never should have been at that table in the first place. They were conned because they simply didn't have the needed experience. That's a good reason to vote no. "Always vote no on the first deal" is not.
