Originally Posted by
Lerxst
And you be falling right into the company's trap of pitting the pilot groups against one another. I have no problem with UA getting more if that's what was owed under a true Retro calculation like you describe. It shouldn't be a ratio or percentage anyways; BOTH MC's should have insisted that the company calculate and pay out the open ended and aggregrate individual retro themselves. From what I understand you guys fell into the same trap before with the bond payment being ALPA calculated and administered; how much angst did that cause?
Unfortunately, we now have a capped payout that does not seem to have taken any of those calculations into consideration and instead is a low ball attempt to create strife and consternation between the 2 groups and get us defocused off the real enemy.
I talked to my rep, and he has read the story presented here wrt the signing bonus and tells a different story. There is obstructionism and shenanigans happening on both sides in this process because the company played us, again.
I'm not, nor have ever been, "against" any of the CAL pilots. There are times when I think your MEC and MC have hurt our chances of getting a good JCBA, but I am also well aware that the same could be said of our MEC and MC... particularly our previous MC. Again, nature of this beast. We all want what's best for us, and sometimes our interests are not in lockstep. Hopefully cool heads will prevail going forward.
I agree that the retro section should have been calculated as you suggested above. Trouble is, this was a "negotiation", and we don't always get everything we want. I wasn't in the room, so I can't comment on how that negotiation went and what the NMB had to say about it.
Your assessment of our bond debacle is inaccurate. The MEC created a problem that shouldn't have existed by not allowing us to vote on a distribution method. They did this because the numbers would have pushed the method towards the junior pilots preferred payout method. The MEC chose the middle option, thinking it was a fairer distribution in order to protect the senior pilots. A group of the most senior pilots, wanting GAP 1, (which would NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS been voted in) sued and won claiming they didn't have fair representation. A simple vote would have solved the problem. In this case, we will vote on the contract, including the retro section. This is not the same issue.