Originally Posted by
Flying Elvis
A couple observations from someone new to the fight:
1) I believe several posters stated unequivocally that this matter would be swept under the table as a concession in Sec 6 negotiations. That did not happen. This should tell us about the many conflicting rumors from trusted sources.
2) Lots of chatter as to whether this is an adequate penalty for the severity of offense. No numbers to back up either side of the argument.
What I would like to see is the following numbers, from the company, DALPA, DPA, and any others:
A) Estimated financial gain made by company through contract violation.
B) Estimated financial loss to pilot force due to contract violation, to include opportunity costs (lost upgrades, green-slips due to understaffing, ALV to reserves, etc)
As far as doling out the moolah, again I have less than a whole dog in said fight. However I will postulate that precious few will be happy about how this is paid out, except the handful of us 2010 CJO recipients who have been told we're splitting $10M in recompense for not getting on property till 2014 due to the hiring freeze.
Another question to ask, had DALPA not created such a long time frame to live in a state of imbalance (3 years?) followed by another too long period (1 year?) to come into compliance, how many upgrades, pilots required and monetary losses would have been tabulated under the older agreement? It seems DALPA gave them a sweet deal, they still failed to abide and now damages are pennies on the dollar.
As others smarter than I have said here, the penalty should be through increased percentage of flying for the same amount of time they fell out of compliance (ie the next three years we get 51.5% of the JV flying for example) rather than some chump change that sets the precedent of further scope violation sales in the future. In addition, any settlement taking place now should include stiff penalties (hundreds of millions) for not living up to an agreement signed by this management team. Is this good business ethics? What if the pilot group decided to "go out of compliance" on some part of the contract. What would be the outcome?