Originally Posted by
tsquare
I would rather have a bigger pay increase than incur the loss of W2 that the overstaffing you advocate would probably cause.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. Are you saying that you'd rather increase hourly rates than become less productive? Isn't the corollary to that being willing to trade some current productivity for higher pay rates too?
Realize that there is a huge balancing act here. In LOA 46, we traded productivity by giving up the cap, etc. so that we would not have to take as big a pay cut. The upside was that those who wanted to could fly more, thereby making up some of the W2 loss. The downside was that upgraded slowed, potentially offsetting some or all of that W2 gain.
I've never run the numbers, so I don't know whether it's better to sell productivity and accept the slower upgrade to higher paying equipment in return for higher pay rates than one would otherwise have had vs. keeping (or buying back) productivity for quicker upgrades but having lower pay rates overall.
Originally Posted by
tsquare
I have yet to see any affect on the number of pilots due to shortages or overages within any reasonable amount of time. I think it is merely for show because the airline evolves continuously, and as the category morphs naturally, so does the number of pilots. I think this has little to do with any formula triggers.
I believe we saw that effect specifically when the company thought they could run the airline on 300 newhires per year, but quickly realized they needed more just to keep afloat of the staffing formula. As it is, some categories are right at the minimum, which means that they cannot add so much as a minute of credit time to the bid package with violating the PWA.