From this week's CAL MEC Position Report (Friday, October 21, 2011):
The next topic I want to address is profit sharing. Recently, I have received comments from pilots who are upset that the CAL pilot group is the only employee group at both CAL and UAL not in the 2011 profit sharing pool. I completely agree with those who have expressed their anger over this. I do not know how management can morally exclude those most responsible for generating profit, especially a management that touts the concept of dignity and respect.
First, I am going to try and clear up some misunderstanding about how we got to this point, and why the Continental pilots are not currently part of the 2011 profit sharing pool – the fault rests solely with management. There has never been a time when the union has not tried to maintain our enrollment in the profit sharing plan. The unfortunate fact is that as part of Contract ’02, profit sharing had a sunset date that caused it to end in December 2009. I don’t know why it was negotiated that way, but it was, and we must deal with the reality. You cannot change the past – only attempt to shape the future. Moving forward to 2010, we recognized that there was a real possibility that, absent a new agreement on profit sharing, we would be left out when payments were made for 2010. As a part of the Transition and Process Agreement (TPA), we were able to negotiate one more year of inclusion. You received those checks last February. Our pilot group benefitted in the neighborhood of $40M by adding that single year of profit sharing. Would we have liked to get more? Yes. Did we try and achieve more? Yes. We tried to negotiate inclusion in perpetuity, but were not able to achieve that goal through the TPA. It is important to understand that the TPA’s main purpose was not to fix major contractual issues, but to provide a transition to a new JCBA. We remain convinced that Continental pilots should maintain our enrollment in the profit sharing plan. The TPA was the vehicle we used for achieving that goal for 2010 and we are still working on other ways to secure inclusion for this year and beyond. Should we be unsuccessful, the profit sharing amounts will be considered as one more part of the retro negotiations.