Originally Posted by
Alan Shore
Conventional wisdom seems to be that the company will again come after productivity in the next negotiation. As such, I certainly don't blame ALPA for asking us our feelings about the various ways in which management might seek to address that. We each need to give loud and clear answers to these questions, so that there is no ambiguity as to how the pilot group feels.
I do have one question, though, for the crowd. Has anyone ever done or seen a study on whether it is better to become more productive (assuming that you can capture 100% of the value of that productivity in higher pay rates) or remain as is?
For example, suppose you make some sort of change in the contract that makes you more productive, e.g., higher ALV, pay banding, vacation sellback, whatever. Suppose further that you accurately determine the value of the resulting decrease in required staffing and increase pay rates by an equivalent amount.
The result is that each pilot will progress in his career at some slower rate, resulting in less seniority, slower upgrade, etc. At the same time, all pay rates will have been adjusted upward by some amount. Assuming the pilot flies the same number of hours or days either way, would the slower time to upgrade eventually overcome the higher pay rates overall, or vice versa, or would it make no difference?
Honest question -- I have no idea. Anybody?
I think there are too many unknown future variables to accurately assess that one way or the other. So it boils down to what each of us thinks is best for his/her own individual situation.
For me personally, I've been at rock bottom of the M88A category for over 7 years. I only have 10 years left in my career and I have no desire to fly a different airplane. So my plan is to stay on the 88 for my remaining 10 years and hopefully be very senior on it within a few more years. I don't mind being "productive" when I'm at work. In fact, I would prefer that over sitting around.
For me, it comes down to how many days I have to work versus how much money I make. Retirement is coming together nicely, so I'm not looking for improvements to that other than the automatic improvement I would get with increased pay (15% company contribution). Right now, I'm having to work too many days (probably averaging about 18 days per month) to get even remotely close to what I would like to make. I'd like to see that number go down to more like 15. But I don't mind flying more hours during those 15 days. What is imperative to me is that the pay rates, work rules, or some combination improve to the point where my W2 is approximately equivalent to the W2 of an M88A in 2004 adjusted for inflation. That is my objective. There are probably 12,000 other objectives... some very similar to mine and some completely different. But I'll bet W2 improvement is pretty darn high for a large majority.