Originally Posted by
xjsaab
As long as the LCA and FTI's get senority and Longevity, I would be okay with them being bypassed for a specified period of time. They're hiring LCA's outside of XJ, they can't find instructors/retain them anyways. This may slow down the exodus from the training department when new job opportunities arrive. Face it mesaba is having a hard enough time staffing, losing quality LCA's would make it even harder.
They have not hesitated in the past to choose the best option for them at the expense of their workers, so my position is to give them the same courtesy now.
ALPA did a good job of explaining why this sucks for everyone (not just the FTI's/LCA's).
Management also wants to be able to bypass FTI’s (instructors, check airman and APD’s) for 9 months. Both the Mesaba and Northwest MEC’s are strongly opposed to this. We believe that the existing Letter of Agreement requires that Mesaba pilots flow in seniority order, and that until very recently, management did not ask for the “bypass” relief they are now proposing. In addition, we will lose relative seniority on the NWA Seniority List if management prevails. The following example shows why.
Example: In January 2008, three pilots are supposed to flow to NWA, but they are instead bypassed. NWA will place them on the NWA seniority list and back fill their positions with three non-Mesaba pilots, increasing the class by three non-Mesaba pilots. In February when three more Mesaba pilots are to flow, those three pilots are now three seniority numbers lower than they would have been because six pilots were placed on the seniority list in January instead of the three. If this type of bypassing continues, when we start flowing nine per month this knock down in seniority really adds up. Each month Mesaba pilots will lose nine numbers, so a pilot who is scheduled to flow in two years will get a seniority number 216 numbers lower than if they did not bypass pilots.
Another concern we have with the bypass is that NWA has not been willing to guarantee a bypassed Mesaba pilot with a seniority number into class when his freeze expires if NWA is no longer hiring. NWA’s position is if there is no class, they do not have to train the Mesaba pilot at that time. In this case a bypassed pilot may be on the NWA seniority list, but potentially could never actually work for NWA.