spoke with union rep today in FLL for a good 15 minutes. He is one of the insiders. I tried as hard as I could to pick his brain. This is according to him, but a deal is imminent. I was curious about pay and retirement the most as are most folks I suspect. He basically said the company has agreed to 1.5 billion in total compensation over the 5 years. The union was shooting for 1.6ish or so. The 1.5 billion is to be divided up how the union sees fit. He acknowledged that the majority of the money is looked to be spent on the guys at 4-8 year longevity. obviously mostly capt rates. although the didn't give specifics it sounds a lot like jet blue rates.. 165-190 range. We talked about top end. I told him i thought $230 would be reasonable and he said don't be surprised to see it slightly higher than that. He said the senior guys are quickly being out numbered by mid tier seniority levels so therefore paying 125 guys $230 an hour wasn't nearly as big a portion of the 1.5 billion pot as mid level guys so they didn't mind to pay them that. He made it sound like first year still sucks, around $49 but second is around $90 and tops out around $145.
Although he didn't tell me the breakdown between the two, but total retirement, direct contribution and company match on 401k would total 15%. maybe 10 DC and 5 match but who knows. he didn't say. He said an overwhelming majority surveys were more concerned with QOL issues, and thats what they spent most time working on. For the sake of expediency (because thats what surveys asked for) they worked on big ticket items. we DID not discuss stuff like min day, rigs, vacation and many of those items. reading between the lines much of that stuff wasnt discussed, and the new contract will be very similar to the old when it comes to all things other than compensation. I don't understand scope and merger protection so I didn't ask anything regarding that, because truthfully i don't know much about that stuff. He made light of the fact, we could argue for delta pay, and legacy pay and over a long period of time very likely get it. A mediator would buy into the argument that we are worth delta pay due to the success of the company but that a mediator would basically say there work rules and ours our so different that they would grant us delta pay if we took delta rules. Again, his opinion. So the million dollar question is, when this thing comes out, are guys gonna be willing to look at the entire package with Line bidding, 4 days off, good health insurance, good commuter clause and accept maybe 170 an hour when they think they are worth 182? we shall see. If its all about pay rates it will be OK but not great I suspect. but my opinion and mine only is that, as a whole its gonna be on a whole, a fair and reasonable TA. GOOD luck !