gettinbumped

ST,

Your other post made sense to me as well. I think you're exactly right that we will all have to weigh whether the $$ is enough for us to vote yes now, or just punt and wait for a full section 6 negotiation over the next few years. I haven't decided yet. The money wasn't enough to make it an obvious choice. I'll be interested to hear what the negotiating committee has to say about reserve and why there aren't any changes (if indeed that's the case). Obviously there is a cost to those changes (they cost analyze everything during the negotiation), and must have felt the cost wasn't worth the gains and "spent" it elsewhere. I have a buddy who is an A320 Captain on reserve and he is already a firm no ONLY because on the reserve issue. I did have to remain him that there is no guarantee that reserve rules will change under Section 6 either.... He also felt the $39 million to furloughed pilots was a waste. After he said that I stopped talking because I realized the "I want mine" was strong enough in him that further discussion would be futile.

Reserve sucks. Commuting to reserve really sucks, which is why I don't bid up to something that pays more but would see me below the G-Line. Just for the sake of the benefit of those new hires here who are on reserve, it used to REALLLLLLLY suck. It wasn't long ago that there was no such thing as short call. I would commute down to LAX at the beginning of my 6 day stretch and there I would sit in the crash pad for all 6 days.... whether I was used or not. Moveable days off on global reserve have been there forever, so I'm guessing is a VERY expensive item to change and probably deemed not worth the negotiating capital. The 1 FDO on basic reserve is new, and could probably be changed. We used to have FSB all the time, but that practice seems to come and go, but it's not really effective for the company except in limited cases because it burns reserves so fast so I'm guessing it won't be too prevalent. The one thing that we seem to have lost in the last contract was a limit of 8 short calls a month. We gave that up in exchange for being paid for un-used short calls, something we never had until this latest deal. I'm guessing the thinking was that the cost would keep the company from doing it. Clearly that hasn't been the case. We probably could have gotten the limit back of 8 short calls, but I'm guessing the data showed that the number of pilots who actually have 8 unused short calls per month is really small. I would very much like to see a limit of 4 or 5, but it may be very expensive to bargain for. Point being, reserve can suck, but that's sort of the nature of the beast being on reserve. Particularly from afar. It's a lot better than it used to be!

I appreciate the rational arguments on here ST (and others). I'll wait to see what the guys in the room say before I make up my mind whether to vote for or against this. I was hoping for a little more, but is it enough to wait 3 or 4 years for a full section 6 and risk a downturn, etc and loss of immediate leverage? I don't know yet. That's the question I'll have to answer in the coming weeks should the MEC vote to send this out for MR.