Originally Posted by
newarkblows
Flightline with an entirely new scheduling section, no vacation low, and all new contract is not a known quantity. Everything will be different and skedplus really looks like a good program. The main thing that ****ed me off about flightline is its need for people on full time trip loss to manipulate the award. Those same people are the ones spreading the misinformation about skedplus and are being left to "evaluate" the program. Huge conflict of interest!
The PWG guys are not on full time trip loss. This is blatant lie being spread by your side only to inflame the issue. The guy who did the white paper doesn't even run the Flightline system. Thus the guy wasn't interested in preserving his PWG gig. If Flightline were the system used for the combined pilot group, it would be administered by a COMBINED scheduling committee. Why would anyone want a CRJ guys running ERJ runs and vice versa. Another lie being spread to **** people off. Pointless.
I find incredible that you guys will toss whatever bombs you can to get the emotions spun up. You attack many things on our side that your guys know nothing about but yet they will happily say to paint our guys in a negative light.
Most guys that volunteer for the union work work way more days than they get paid for. To attack them just to make yourself feel better about the process might make a big man on the ERJ side but it looks foolish to everybody else. Regardless of what is said here, hopefully we'll all be under under umbrella and those same guys will be fighting for you.
How many union pilots are off of trips to do this and how many days per month?
I couldn't care less which system we actually use, but I am very concerned about having a system that ignores seniority through globalization or any other method. I also think it is foolish to support a system that has never actually been used to run our bids. It would also appear to be a waste of money to try and reinvent the wheel by attempting to use a Pref Bid system that has never been used before. I'm not sold on Flightline, but I am currently much less sold on SmartPref, primarily because I can't actually see it in action. If we are going to end up in a battle over Flightline or SmartPref, then the 2 systems are going to have to be programmed to handle our new work rules, we are going to have to learn both systems, we are going to have to bid with both each month, then decide on the system based on the results, not based on somebody's word. Nothing works the way the salesman says it does, so the only meaningful comparison is to bid with both for a few months.
Or any other method? The changes in the threshold or bottom of the credit window has been described as not honoring seniority since it socialized most to fly about the same amount of flying, regardless of seniority, despite honoring what you bid.
Smartpref has is currently being used for phase 2 on the ERJ side. If you'd like to see it in action, ask your MEC to show it to you. But you will probably run into resistance on that since they already turned down your idea of running them on dual tracks.
Originally Posted by
Washout
I don't have time to go into great detail. but those arguments don't hold water. If they looked into smartpref as they've said they'd know how smartpref does things differently.
Live bidding...doesn't require multiple bid sheets as you get to see real time what you're holding.
Vacation touching. Many ways this can be handles. IE blind bidding. The system doesn't know you have vacation till after the lines is awarded. You select pairings that allow vacation touching and those drop off. Their are different options available that would be customized with work rules.
CDO...this was not part of the demo and is easily changed to conform to work rules.
Credit window... Again, custom work rules dictate what the window can be. Demo is just a generic and arbitrary number.
Open-time. Smartpref doesn't have to solve to 0 open time, thus the feared globalization becomes fairly moot. Again work rules.
Nearly every negative coming from the ASA side about smartpref either has been covered or debunked. I don't even know if i'd vote for either but nearly everything negative mentioned is covered under work rules which need to be negotiated.
Work rules that you do not have. That's a great deal of negotiating capital your going to have to use. You better save every penny because you will not like our interest rate if you need a loan!
And what about the work rules that we will have? Do you honestly think they will resemble anything that we have or anything that you have? It'll be a combination of the two with some rules gone and new ones written. Not to mention that one of the best things about flight line may be gone, vacation low. If flight line would be a decrease in QOL as it exist now, how can you expect us to vote for flight line without vacation low and a whole new set of untested work rules and loopholes?