Originally Posted by
Check Essential
Speaking of our enhanced productivity and lost jobs as a result --
I'm surprised nobody has commented on DALPA's latest innovation. "VACATION ANY"
That little gem is going to cost us another several hundred jobs.
Forget spring hiring. Maybe now we can avoid hiring until fall of 2014.
With this latest "improvement" to PBS we can now move those pesky vacations out of the way and pack more trips onto our lines in vacation months. What a great deal! Just break up the vacation and stick it on any left over individual days when we aren't flying anyway. Pretty much the same as the old "vacation sell back" but without all the embarrassment of actually selling it back.
What is DALPA thinking? Is this really what the membership wants? Fly to the FAR's? Eliminate vacations?
Don't guys realize the correlation between this stuff and displacements?
I am thoroughly disgusted with this trend of destroying jobs in the name of more productivity and more flight hours per month. We are never going to see any advancement on our list if DALPA keeps coming up with these things.
Is it really a good thing to have 20 years as a first officer before the first chance to upgrade? Our union has lost its way.
Maybe its just me (and apparently Timbo) who would like to go back to the old motto --
MORE MONEY MORE TIME OFF !
I am not sure what your objection is. First, Vacation Any came about because of the Scheduling Optimization Team's recommendation, and specifically it was a very popular feature at pre-merger NW. It was largely due to the PMNW pilots' inputs that we have Vacation Any at all.
Further, do you even understand how it works? Under Vacation Any, you will still have just as many vacation days in your bid month as you do now, and they will STILL count towards your PBS calculation for a full month.
What it DOES do is give more guys a chance at either a better regular line, or a regular line at all. Here is a great example.
A guy has his third (tertiatry) week of vacation in mid-February. He doesn't really care about vacation that month, whether this week or that; that is just where it ended up because he is fairly junior. In fact, he hops back and forth from regular to reserve lines due to his "juniority." Prior to Vacation Any, perhaps his vacation week was posted over the only days where there were still trips remaining in the PBS pot--but because he had vacation then, he gets a reserve line. Again, he doesn't care where his vacation really ends up.
Or....in a similar situation, let's say that there are some really good trips that he would like to fly, but again, his vacation days overlap the days of those trips. Vacation Any would fix both situations. Now PBS can move his vacation anywhere in the month, and even split it up IF NECESSARY (and only if necessary) to get the guy what he wants.
Vacation Any gives pilots more flexibility to get more of what they want, more of the time. How is that bad? I think if you give it a few months you will find that it will be a very very good thing.