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Seniority Protection and Furlough/Recall Rights

The conversation should really be over after just this one item. The company has shown in the past that they don’t follow seniority with upgrades. There are four pilots in the Gulfstream with seniority numbers higher than 500. Nine more in the 400s. Are we to believe that nobody higher than #400 wanted to fly the largest aircraft? Mr. Ricci also admitted in the first video series two years ago that there was favoritism in assigning those seats. He straight up admitted it, while our direct manager had been denying it. If they didn’t follow seniority before, why should we believe they will in the future? And what about furlough? Even in the old days of Flexjet we never had true furlough. We had termination with severance and then preferential re-hiring (with an interview) but no guarantee of getting your job back (and not everyone did). And when you did come back, you were a new hire starting all over again. Options has actually furloughed out of seniority in the past (just before the contract). The company has also shown through their contract proposals, which are available on the union website, that they want to give “super seniority” to Red Label pilots and make it so that they can not be bumped out of their seats in the event of a reduction in force, meaning that a more senior pilot could be let go before that Red Label Pilot. In this industry seniority is king and it should be respected above all else. The company has proven that they do not respect it, and so we need a contract to enforce seniority.

Scope

This is an often overlooked but very important part of the contract. The Scope section of the contract protects our jobs. It requires the company to keep a certain number of pilots on the property, limits the amount of charter, prevents the company from starting up another non-union fractional company, and gives us protections in the case of the company being acquired by another entity (or if they buy another company). If not for this section of the contract, the company could, for example, decide there is cheaper labor out there and transfer a fleet to another subdivision of the company while firing a bunch of pilots here.

Keeping the Contract

Ok, the current contract. Has your life been better or worse under the current contract? Or about the same? We are limited to 14 days now which has impacted me (in a good way) a couple times. I got some early morning OT last month which was is a new thing. I know some pilots who have benefited from the new overtime rules (compensatory day off). Voluntary overtime is now 1.5x, not 1.25X. We still have triple time over 14, still have parking and meals and the bonus program. A bunch of you got a raise, and we all got a signing bonus. A lot of the work rules we had before the contract were simply put in writing, such as the hard duty off and on times each day. Some of you lost access to the bases you were using. The loss of vacations wasn’t fun but those aren’t going to be returned to us if we get rid of the union. Do you think the company is going to credit us all 20 hours of PTO? Not a chance.

So if life under the current contract is ok, and by ok I mean more or less the same as pre-contract, why the rush to tear it up? A lot of the work rules we had were because of the Options contract, the company was just using the same rules for us. The day we vote out the union the contract is torn up and we revert to whatever rules are in the FOM (or whatever rules the company wants to use). 16 hour days are back along with rolling rest. We will be required to answer our phones after 10 hours of rest, regardless of what we thought out duty on time was going to be. Who knows what our work rules will be? It will be totally at the company’s discretion.

So why take that chance? Why toss out the contract and give complete control of our work rules and QOL over the company? Let’s keep the current contract and continue working on a new one. This is a very good time to be a pilot from a negotiating stand point. Pilots are leaving to other better paying jobs and there is for once an actual pilot shortage. The company is selling airplanes at a pretty good pace. Flying is up, we are all busy. THIS is the time to be negotiating a contract. It’s not the time too be tearing up contracts and giving up control of our future.

Becoming “At Will” Employees

This company has a different corporate structure and culture than Bombardier. Some things are good about that change, some not so good. Decisions now come from the very top, including decisions to fire pilots. About three years ago Scott and Kevin were fired for posts they made on an internal company message board. Could you imagine that happening back in the Bombardier days? The decision to fire them came directly from Mr. Ricci, and he has a documented history of making those types of decisions in the past as well. It makes me nervous to work for a company where decisions to fire people are made so quickly and lightly. If you are not familiar with the firing of John Hodges, I encourage you to read up on that, as well as the classic bedtime story of the “Fab Five." I know a lot of you say “well I don’t do anything wrong so I don’t need to worry about this” but you must admit that the current culture here is one of keep your mouth shut and don’t complain. Don’t rock the boat, don’t give give feedback, just do what you are told and like it. I know a lot of pilots were worried about joining union committees, filing grievances, complaining about a new policy, or even speaking publicly about being pro union because they were worried about retaliation. Do you agree that fear of retaliation exists? There mere fact that we are worried about being fired for speaking up is a reason we need a union here. This isn’t the Bombardier culture anymore.

Red Label and the division in the pilot group

I don’t have any problem with the concept of Red Label. If the company wants to use that as a marketing tactic then fine, but we all know there is no real difference between a red label airplane and crew and non red label airplane and crew. Yet the pay difference is huge. This is something that is described in Mr. Ricci's book. His belief is that you should pay a small percentage of your pilots above average but most of them below average. And that’s exactly what we have going on here. 30% of our pilots are in Red Label, and we just found out they received another raise, while the rest of us got nothing. The company even bragged about how they pay above industry average, yet forgot to mention how the rest of us, especially the first officers, are below average. In my newsletter from last month I outlined how first officer here make significantly less that at Netjets. 27% less at the year 10 mark. This huge pay disparity is just plain wrong.

Pay

And that leads us into pay. Are you going to make more money with or without the help of the union? I just mentioned how the company’s preferred pay scale is based on Red Label getting all the love. If you look at the contract proposals, every singe union proposal was for more pay across the board, while every company pay proposal was for no (or very little) increase. At any time since the divorce from Bombardier the company could have thrown us a bone and increased our pay (even now with a simple LOA), yet they have not, with the exception of Red Label. In the recent video series Mr Ricci even said that he could not raise first officer pay even if he wanted to (not true, he can raise our pay). He does not believe that the pilot shortage is impacting us. We have been told that we are not having any trouble hiring. So I don’t see the company handing out raises just because we ask nicely. We need a union and the support of the pilot group to get the contract and the pay we deserve.

The company’s history of negative changes

We’ve seen a lot pf changes here since the buy out. Some good, such as bases (although I could argue a big part of that was the Options contract), but many were definitely not good. The erasing of our sick and vacation banks, losing the 3% 401k match, the decrease in hotel quality, the decrease in sedan quality (requirement to user UberX now), the increased scrutiny and stinginess of our expense reports, And the uniforms… remember when the company formed a pilot committee to work on a new uniform proposal, and then a member of that committee flew Mr. Ricci, mentioned the committee, to which Mr Ricci replied “I’m the uniform committee.” Turns out the uniform was already selected and the committee was just for show. If that is any indication of how things will go without a union, I’ll choose the 1108 any day of week.


Vote to keep the Union. If you want change then volunteer to help out. Get involved, support your co-workers who are volunteering their time, and demand that the company meet the pilots at the negotiating table. This is not the time to be tearing up the contract and handing our pay, QOL, and future over to the company. The have not done enough to earn our trust and to prove that they truly have the best interests of the pilots in mind. Their op priority has been getting rid of the union, while it should have been doing the right thing for the employees.