Sailingfun,

Please tell me how any furlough protection is better now or then. I thought we had pretty good furlough protection back then. It took the company declaring FM to furlough then they continued at every opportunity to change what we had in the contract to fly the airline with less pilots. If you remember something different please throw it in. We had (in C2k):

Furlough protection for everyone on property as of date of signing
If the company furloughed they had to give a certain amount of notice and the cap had to be reduced, for 3 months I believe, to a cetain level before they could be furloughed. Once we had people on furlough we had a 75 hour cap.

Reality turned out to be a little worse. Company declares FM, company furloughs on their timeline, company asks for relief from 75 hour cap and gets it, greenslips are flowing like a river (but hey it counts against the manning formula) when company triggers the numbers that required them to recall they do it at a trickle not the historic training capacity levels.

Long story short, and only my opinion, but furlough protection is a waste of negotiating capital. If the company needs to furlough pilots they will find a way.