tj
Originally Posted by
trico
There are about 1800 pilots here at DAL above me that have were hired after me. For those of you still reading this, I don't lie in bed at night gnashing my teeth over this, but if we set the template for a smooth and relatively non-hostile SLI by calmly accepting relative seniority as the new normal all the angst about other airlines hiring and those new pilots coming over on top of us is pretty ironic. We made our bed and we'll have to lie in it at a time not of our choosing. Yeah, yeah, I know the list is a product of arbitration, but the way we went about it set us up for the end result.
Deltaairlines(one word)
is not interested in organic growth and our association(I refuse to call it a union) is not interested in our scope concerns, both items that would mitigate the damage done by the next SLI, so we'll have to prepare ourselves to man up and welcome whoever our new brethren will be, even the ones above us with less seniority.
Agree with your thoughts. But, correct me if I'm mistaken; weren't we relative seniority, then a pull and plug method used to provide equity for future attrition?
The DAL / NWA merger "worked for us" in as much as no one burned the house down & the Company has been successful ceding our network forsr improved margins without furloughing (yet). But, I think it is a terrible model for merger integration if applied elsewhere. It did not recognize status quo, so there were winners and losers. Further, the new methodology of using future attrition as an equity throws a real wild card in the mix. (just imagine a US Air / Delta merger using that model).
The only fair merger is status quo. Pilots should be in the same seat, equipment and pay after a merger. That does harm those at airlines in decline (as ours is) and award those at dynamic, growing, competitive airlines. But, in both cases, why do pilots expect anything different than they had pre-merger?
There is certainly scenarios where a pilot could go on leave from Delta now, get hired somewhere else and end up being able to pick seniority. Might be a way to hedge your career in the scenario you describe.