Originally Posted by
Huck
Let's say your house caught on fire.
The fire department came and saved your house.
Would you say, "Thanks for nothing. I just have what I already had."
The new corporate head of legal was going to make his bones by ushering in PBS. It was going to save the company 10-15% in staffing costs. It is industry standard. Our union fought it off to the point where it never even got to a TA to be voted down.
The house didn't burn. But all we got now is the same house. If you don't like an attitude of gratitude for that then I don't know what to tell you.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Sure, the company wanted PBS. They'd like to pay us pennies on the dollar and they'd like to take our retirement.
I don't think we won by keeping what we already had. That's absolutely ridiculous. It was probably the best opportunity to IMPROVE our contract that we will ever have in our careers. They are hundreds of pilots short. They are hiring like mad but still offering AVA in almost every seat. Sure, there will always some of us flying draft during negotiations. But they are so short, it would still put pressure on the company to negotiate.
I think we left a lot on the table. I think we made a big mistake not drawing our line in the sand and improving our retirement. Honestly, I could live with rest of this unspectacular contract, but not addressing retirement was a deal killer for me. I have about 10 years left. The B fund improvement will increase my account by about 40k over those 10 years. That's really not much.
People make a huge deal over PBS. I worked at a legacy carrier that had it. Sorry, but it wasn't a big deal. Seniority ruled, and many times you had better lines than you have now. Instead of someone else building lines, you built them yourselves. I hear guys saying that they can't get a full month off on vacation months and that sort of thing, then they sell back their vacations and work 20 days that month anyway. I'd much rather have our current system, but it has it's price too.