Originally Posted by gloopy

Yeah sometimes we chase our tails on this one. While "productivity" is a four letter word among unions, it is why SWA has been so phenomenally successful while paying dramatically more than their competitors all while having 100% scope.

As nice as it is to think we can legislate through our contract massive unproductively to drive hiring it just doesn't work like that. All that does is push for even more outsourcing at an ever more fervent pace (thanks spell checker).

Some guys still think we can open section 6 and be all like "ok you ignorant managers, here's a contract doubling the number of pilots required to do the exact same amount of work...AND we're getting a big raise!" It just doesn't work like that. Little scams like "buddy-bid-month-off-greenslip-line-triple-pay" and touch drop vacations that many want so a select few can get over a month off with each week's vacation while others only get 4 days are sneaky little jailhouse lawyer tricks and are extremely expensive and unproductive ways to concentrate the value of a CBA into the hands of a very select few while having NOTHING to do with honoring seniority. Likewise, senior reserves flying 2 days a quarter while junior reserves fly max lines every month is equally unreasonable.

Seniority should matter for a lot of things on reserve, but it shouldn't mean getting an entire month off while others in category work 18 non commutable days. All line holders, junior or senior, fly a full line value. You can bid min or max, but you're flying a full line. But somehow when it comes to reserve, seniority is an entitlement to be the absolute last to be used under any circumstance. So senior reserve under that type of system becomes yet another micro empire slush fund and the rest of the CBA has to eat the cost of that. Like I think FTB mentioned, the logical equivalent would be to give the top 10% of lineholders the month off while distributing their trips among the other line holders to fly on their days off for no additional pay because hey, we got to respect the seniority.

Some will say productivity will result in excess staffing, but that is only true if you keep the insanely high levels of outsourcing we have. And when we go for SWA pay, the company will demand SWA productivity to which I say we tell them to bring it on...right after we get their scope and pay. We have the upper hand on the productivity argument anyway. Want us to fly 800+ block hour years for narrowbody domestic? OK, but we're getting SWA pay for small narrowbody flying and up from there and work rules that give reserves 14/15 days a month off and the average line holder 18. That means we will need extremely good rigs to drive that productivity, amirite?