Originally Posted by
TheManager
What you post is true, but......
In the annual instructors meeting this week where Richard spoke, he said that he has:
"No problem with Delta pilots being the most highly compensated major airline pilots" as a group.
Yay!
Now, here is the other side of the coin.
He then made it CLEAR that even with Americans recent raise, we are currently more that 10% ahead of them in COMPENSATION.
Ahhhhh. Guess it's obvious where their opening position is.
PS + Pay rates + benefits = compensation. They are going to look at the whole number, not line item improvements.
Food for thought. If you go to the bank, and apply for a loan on a toy or a bigger house, etc, do they count profit sharing into their loan equations?
Yeah, pretty easy argument to win on.
We are one Putin tantrum away from conceivably watching our profit sharing evaporate. The banks know it. ALPA knows it. We should know it. The company knows it. But adopting that bargaining position has been assured because it's the most advantageous one they can try to defend to minimize our gains and their losses cause that's what this is all about.
They aren't benevolent. They never will be. They are about doing whats good for the corporation. It's their job.
Now, the ball is in ALPAs court. The company is going to make their job difficult and try to make them purchase every gain through a give back in work rules, PS, benefits, etc..
Hence, the trial balloons that have been floating around.
Hate to see those as it signals that they are not confident enough in their ability to secure outright gains.
JMO opinion. Of course, others will vary.
I wish I were there to hear Richard talk about our "Total Compensation" being 10% higher than AA's.
I would have mentioned our lost RETIREMENT PLAN, which American Pilots STILL HAVE!
Add in a $3 Million retirement plan for every senior AA 777 Captain, (and they have many more 777's than we do!) to the rates made by the senior AA pilots, then let's compare that Total Compensation to the Delta Pilots with the same years of service, who lost their entire DB plan!
I hope SOMEBODY reminded Richard that we are still 18% BEHIND our 2004 pay rates, and have NO DB PLAN! The 16% profit sharing check we just got was nice, but that's still 2% short of 2004 pay rates, let alone the Retirement Plan!