Originally Posted by
eruption
What has happened to the younger generation? I mean you! There are no guarantees in life. When you started flying, there was no "guarantee" that you would be working for any major airline. You put money in your 401K without any guarantee. You have children and there's no guarantee that they will grow up leading a successful life, etc.
Sometime, there comes a point, that you have to look at yourself in the mirror and ask...."is this the best I can do".
If you are OK with this contract and think YOU have given all you can to get this deal, vote yes. All I am saying is I have been here 22 years and my best years all DAL were the first 3 years.
Then the merger/consolidation cycle started with PanAm and this career at DAL, in terms of QOL and now pay, after BK, has been steadily going down hill.
Do you think this cycle is going to stop? Just look at the NWA/DAL merger....Are there more airplanes, more pilots, UPWARD movement?
This TA keeps the "trend" line in a downwardly direction.....300 permanent jobs lost, higher ALV, working more days......
Yep, 325 76 seat RJ's should raise a huge red flag. If you are basing this "take it know" approach because of the uncertainty of the economy.....This one item should be enough to vote NO.
Because once they are on the property, if DAL re-enters BK, those extra 70 airframes could be the difference between getting furloughed/displaced backward or not.
There's a huge difference between 255 and 325 large RJ airframes. Mark my words....This one Scope item is going to come back and bite us down the road.
Your post is very intriguing. I would like to ask you a couple of things. Are you fNWA or DAL? Because if you were DAL, and the first 3 years were your best, then you must have flown a TON of greenslips whilewe had guys on furlough, because there is no way that those years could possibly have been better than the time right after C2K was signed unless you only flew about 10 hours/month... And if you were fNWA, then how can you possibly compare your tenure at NWA prior to the merger as anything other than horrendous and you should be thanking your lucky stars for the merger because that would make it pretty obvious that our pre merger contracts were light years ahead of ANYTHING you had at NWA... Or maybe I am missing something. (My disclaimer here is that I am not trying to start any merger foodfight again, I just do not understandhow you can say either way that your first 3 years on the property wer the best...)
Next. Since you have been through at least 2 mergers, I would think that by now you would have realized that in the merger world, 1+1 does NOT = 2, no matter how management teams and Wall Street try to spin it. It just doesn't. So the question that looms large in my mind is how do we get the most value out of one? Management does not need our help or cooperation to pull off the business deal, no matter how much we think otherwise. Look at SWA/AT... AWA/USAir... the list is really endless. So ax yourself.. IF management is going to do a deal.. and I think we are pretty much in agreement that there IS another merger on the short term horizon, how do we extract as much out of that deal as possible?
You are looking at small potatoes in some areas.. in large ones in others. My contention is that we take this deal, (like Ferd says, hold your nose and vote for it) and see how much more we can extract in the upcoming merger talks. If we are onboard and have captured real value, then there will be more to capture when the deal is announced. OR, we can bow up and say no, and be totally left out in the cold, trying to recapture what we just lost when the deal is brought before us. You really need look no further than NWA/DAL merger.. we said no once.. and what happened? We lost about $250 million. We had another chance though and were able to get a pretty good deal, but where would we be right now had we signed that first deal? How much further down the field would we be.. right now?
Do the math on the pay.
Read the furlough protections
Understand how the RJs come on board and how that process recaptures mainline flying.
This is a good deal, and it sets the foundation for an even better one in 3 years, but probably even sooner when/if a merger is announced, because once again, management will want us onboard to smooth the transition..