Originally Posted by
slowplay
That someone that told you didn't understand the answer as I heard it.
The NC chair said there would be a negotiator's notepad coming out that will provide an apples to apples comparison of the public portions of the AF and KLM contracts. That includes pay. He commented that unlike the US, the European CLA's were private documents and that he would have to send the notepad for their review. He also said their workrules were similar to ours, but their pay structure was completely different (KLM salaried and AF a mix of salary and hourly). He did point out that the French get 48 days of vacation mandated by French law, so it's not something that's in their contract. I'd sure like that piece here.
It will be interesting to see when it comes out. I got the idea like ACL's friend that a lot of the spicifics were off limits and only general terms could be used.
TO did say that the AF/KLM gross pay was significantly higher than ours but net was similar due to taxes. The problem I see is those pilots get a lot of "nationalized" benefits from those taxes while we take a lot of those benefits from our net. I would like to see some kind of comparison on "equivalent" compensation kind of like our EKSM JV metric. Realistically that is probably going to be impossible to do.
As to a government mandated vacation system, no thanks.
-vpr