Wow….almost a thoughtful post except the fact you don’t   

Please tell everyone how to create this dier need for amc to negotiate and create leverage as you say "before" going into the negotiating process?

you do realize that is not actually what Einstein said about insanity, don't you? You watch too many movies. It's like this every Few years because that's the process outlined by the NMB and RLA. It's required. Or, you could just not enter negotiations and never get a raise or set yourself further behind by waiting.

Heres how to fix this and resolve it going forward. It benefits the company and the union.

1) standardized pay for amc pilots based on their years as a pilot at amc, flat rate for each year and that's the scale.

2) now if they want to pay for experience, put "x" amount for every year of qualified experience paid as a stipend annually and not part of the annual salary.

1 and 2 standardized pay for amc pilots and makes it so that no new hire or inexperienced pilot actually makes more than a tenured pilot other than stipends that are not calculated for workover, overtime, or benefits.

3) Set a flat rate pay raise annually or say 3% and then have the contract pay that average of the previous 11 months of inflation (COL) on top of that. In other words it may be 8.9% one year becaue of the rate increase but then only 3% per year when those rates aren't as high. This is how they worked the medical costs in the last contract. this helps project flat rates for a longer term and eliminates the need to have to renegotiate a contract every few years, because it always comes down to pay.

these are easy fixes and provide long term relief and projections for both the employee and the employer.