Because they only want to share in the upside potential, not any downside.

As with any company there is a specific amount of money available to pay employee wages based on the business model and the forecast income stream. If your company takes in $1,000,000 a year in revenue you might be able to pay $400,000 in wages with the rest going to other costs. Now if the revenue increases to $1,200,000 and profit increases then you might, might, be able to pay $450,000 in wages. But that is not a way to plan a business model. Your fixed wage costs must be within your business model.

Profit sharing involves some risk to have the upside potential for a profit sharing payout. In the case above it would not be unreasonable to ask the employees to accept $375,000 in fixed wages but with the potential to get up to $450,000 in wages if the company returns enough profit. After all, if there was no profit sharing plan then the company would keep all of the extra profit.

So in the case of UAUA the FA's and the other unions all wanted to increase the fixed portion of their wages. That comes at the cost of the potential of the profit sharing portion. They negotiated a lower profit sharing payout to have a higher fixed wage. Now that the company is making profits they want to complain about "shared pain/shared gain". They negotiatated away some of the pain but want 100% of the shared gain that they also negotiated away.

Standard union financial planning.


(The numbers above are just for example purposes)