Originally Posted by
Free Bird
Not sure by what you mean about "as long as they hit 48.5 once". The way it is set up now (the settlement), the company has to maintain a minimum of 48.5% of EASKs every year. Since 2010 the company has not been in compliance once.
Furthermore, the language states the new "minimum" is an AVERAGE of 46.5%. This means we went from a minimum of 48.5% to an Average of 46.5%.
We can throw out numbers all day long; essentially, the company was out of compliance for 6 years and we just gifted them into compliance.
With this new contract we are:
- Allowing the company to do less Atlantic flying than they are currently doing.
- If the company goes below 48.5% EASK then it triggers a global protection that is contractually 5% less International flying than we are doing today.
If the company flat out did not respect our "Floor" over the Atlantic, why would they respect our new global "Floor"?
I would have more faith in the Block hour floor if we would of added Non-Compliance language. Unfortunately, DALPA didn't learn their lesson from 6 years of the company breaking our contract.
How the Scope section is being labeled a win in beyond me. It clearly allows the company to fly fewer international flights.
We didn't gift them anything, our previous MEC Chairman was so certain we would vote yes on POSTA15#1, (can't remember what we call it these days) that he worked out a deal with management for $30 Million with no changes to the language because the TA he knew would be ratified, reset everything and would bring the company back into compliance. Unfortunately, the grievance settlement didn't require ratification. Just a slight oversight by MD and we were going to have to wait four more years before revisiting the weak stick JV language and grieve it again.
I think our union was kind of neutered by the sloppy handling of the first TA wrt the JV grievance because of their assumption that we were all willing to eat that $hit sandwich and the problem would be forever corrected in the company's favor.
Now, having said that, I'd love to see better language. Watching AF/KLM, and all of the other foreign airlines slam all of our cities with their heavies while we serve maybe one or two cities in each of their respective countries, sometimes none, makes me ill. Open skies favors every other airline much more than it favors us...in my opinion any way. But if we think we can force Delta to operate flights to destinations they don't want to serve, we are kidding ourselves. We had furlough language in our C2K contract that we all thought protected everyone on the list, until it didn't.
I don't really know what the right answer is. I'm not saying this language is better than the previous language, but I did think having to wait 4 years to grieve their non-compliance was rediculous. I do think code shares and JV's are here to stay. I like the year to year review so we can address noncompliance sooner than our previous language. I just don't know how we can truly enforce a scope clause that forces the company to do flying they don't want to do or can't do profitably. And if you think having highly punitive penalties attached to our scope clause, Management would never agree to a contract with language like that. Just like they'd never agree to 10% raises annually after the contract becomes amendable as an incentive for them to work with us on a new contract.
Fire away, in my defense, I've had a little wine tonight.