Originally Posted by
tsquare
Whoa whoa whoa, back up the truck here. You just made a huge leap in this discussion. All I was saying is that we have a current level of manning. In order to keep from having trips broken up, or OOB DHers from covering trips, manning will have to go up. The result of that will have to be less flying and a W2 cut. I guess I have adjusted my life to a certain level of flying each month, and cutting that without a corresponding increase in pay is not worth it to me in the confines of this discussion. So right there, we are going to have to get a bigger hourly pay increase than we would have otherwise to get to the same W2.
I don't want a cap. I want more money to do the flying I have become accustomed to. There is no way that you can get the kind of pay increase you are talking about having to get to both institute a cap, hire more pilots to (essentially) overstaff each category and equal the W2 I would get without all the fluff. It's just math. Remember, the pot of money is only so big, and the company doesn't care how we allocate it, right? All these things being talked about will cut the pie into more slices. A 10% increase in hourly rates and a 12% decrease in flying is a W2 paycut.
The slower upgrade argument is a thing of the past too. Any of this would be minute, and unnoticed.
Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you there.
All I'm saying is that productivity affects both pay and QOL, and that changes in productivity can be bought or sold if we wish. In the end, I'm not sure whether the resulting gain or loss in pay rates (assuming an even exchange) is a net gain one way or the other.
SWAPA clearly decided a long time ago that they would be better off selling productivity for pay rates. As a result, their W2s have been very impressive, and they still get plenty of days off. Variances in their staffing levels affect that to a certain extent, but they seem to be generally happy with their contract structure overall.