Originally Posted by
SONORA PASS
Baseball,
If I understood the issue right, it is the variable aspect of paying LTD benefits that is the issue. Those unknowns either require maintaining a buffer, or paying a fee to a third party company to handle the risks versus rewards of taking that obligation.
Knowing exactly how much money they need to hold back is not a blue v.s. black and not a company vs. union the way I understand it. The R&I will have to do an awesome job predicting the future or pay "insurance" to cover that variable for the old CAL plan.
V/R
SP
One of the reasons that the legacy CAL LTD plan was so good was it's cost. It mandated us "over pay" into it. That is what gave us great benefits.
I do agree the company likely has no dog in this fight, and therefore won't growl it's teeth.
The bigger problem is that the moneys are already paid out and we don't actually have a good mechanism to collect the overpayments, otherwise we would have already received a check.
It's really just a matter of finding the right lawyer. ALPA should actually do this for us. They should open the ALPA tool box, bust one a top knotch layer and tell him or her to handle it.
No tooth pulling involved.....Unless that is.....There is another agenda. That's when ALPA starts pushing back, ignoring the pilots, or drags their feet.
My guess is ALPA is doing a combination of ignoring the pilots and dragging their feet.
I would set a deadline for action, and then act. Don't let anyone, ALPA, nor the actuaries push you or the pilots around. If no action by the deadline, and make sure it's reasonable, then be decisive.
Every year my insurance company sends me a check for over payments. It's automatic. If everything balanced out, and they are happy, it's just an "automatic" thing that just happens. Why is this so different?