Look, times are tough.
We are about to go into contract negotiations with the big recession getting tremendously worse. We're intercoursed. There is no way we're going to get SWA + anything much less SWA + 15% rates for the DC9. And if we did, how could they afford to give all of the other employees similar and significant pay raises? They can't. Can't happen. Fruitless cause.
Sure Scambo and others have funded the airline these past few years with $300,000 plus givebacks in flight pay alone to help the airline recover from the sins of management teams of old. But it's time we help the company even further.
Now look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a negative nancy or to buy in the DALPA managed expectations game, but I am perfectly willing to:
1. Take a 12% pay cut in the first year of C2012 with a 5% increase year after year after that, as long as,
A. We're paid by the duty hour with a minimum of 9 hours per day with a average daily hourly value of 6 hours per trip,
B. To further reduce costs, reserve pilots will only be on reserve 13 days a month,
C. Scope can stay where it is, until 2014, where pay will increase 1 percentage point for every 70+ seat regional jet flying for Delta Connection and 1/10th of 1 percentage point for every flight flown by Alaska as a Delta codeshare flight from a Delta or Northwest pilot base that existed in 1996, and
D. The company, Delta, shall explain to all shareholders and employees that their pilots have continuously and consistently been willing to help fund the success of this airline off their own backs and that they shall bow down and worship the ground we walk on from here on out.
