Originally Posted by
tsquare
With guys like you and Carl on the equipment, there is no room for any of the rest of us. No insult intended Timbo, but you are young and at the top of the hill. As long as DAL has only a few of the biggest equipment, and there are 12,000 of us, there is a huge number that will never be able to hold that equipment for any length of time. Damn right I wouldn't bid up. I might even "down"bid to the fluff so that I could have an even better QOL. Why should my QOL have to suffer in order to fly to SYD rather than doing ATL turns? Quality... of... Life. I still wonder why it's importance got put on a backburner... The advantage of being able to enjoy seniority and wait to fly a single sucky year went away with our DB retirement plans. Now... when the vast majority of us will be able to hold that equipment, it will be too late to do anything meaningful towards your retirement. Bad QOL and no money to show for it in retirement. At least I can hope for age 67. Yup.. Great idea.
I hear you T2.
I'm only here for the money.
And the time off.
And the layovers.
In that order.
If we had one big pay band, I'd probably bid what ever is flying the BCN, DUB, HNL and BOS layovers.
But so would everybody else, I doubt I could hold BCN.
And new hires would be flying the LOS and DKR trips, as it should be!
What worries me is, if we do go to pay banding, outside of the reduced pilot staffing it would require (through increased productivity, just like PBS and no cap on swaps) is, if we pay a 717 Capt. the same as a 737 Capt. where 110 seats pays the same as 180 seats, then how do we justify our 777 pay relative to RJ pay?
In the next contract (2020?) the company will come to us and say, "We can't afford to be paying a 767 Capt. the same as a 747 Capt. The 767 is just too expensive, we're going to park it unless you give us..."
So now, just like the RJ's have been dragging down our narrow body pay for the past 20 years, they will pull the same crap with the rest of our equipment, next time the economy turns south, and you KNOW it will at some point.
For the company, it's Win-Win. They get the first win when they don't have to hire 10% more pilots, due to nobody bidding up for a higher paying seat.
They get the second win when the economy turns south, and they come to us and say they just can't afford to pay a 717 driver the same as a 737 driver, so they have to outsource the 717 flying...again.
The single biggest failure of ALPA National, since The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, is to NOT set an Industry wide pay rate for seats/equipment, for all ALPA carriers, and to NOT have a National Seniority List.
They KNEW the industry would eventually consolidate, and they sat by and did nothing as Eastern, Pan Am and TWA and CAL and US AIR went down the toilet, lost pay, retirements and their jobs, while dragging the rest of the industry down too.
Then the B scale came to AA, a non-ALPA carrier, and National ALPA let it come to ALPA carriers.
Then the RJ's came, and they still did nothing to stop the spread of low budget jet flying.
Then the bankruptcies came, and there still was no mention of any SOS or any other means to stop the downward spiral.
And now, finally, what's left of the Legacy Carriers are making Billions per quarter, and there's zero talk of restoration.
None.
Like it never happened.
Pay banding is the final straw that will eventually lead to all of us making RJ wages.
Oh, and there'll be much less mainline flying jobs for the RJ guys to move into, if we aren't moving up, so there's that too...