Originally Posted by
Blackhawk
Actually, I am working under the XJT contract. October bidding in ORD is IAW the XJT contract.
There are some aspects of the contract I like. I'm not dogging everything in the contract. But it's ironic that you would say you like your contract because it's not "every man for himself", but that's essentially what ILIW IS. Every man for himself.
Also, ALPA did fight long and hard for seniority. Prior to that upgrades, furloughs, everything was at the whim of the company. If they liked you, you upgraded. If they didn't like you or you were an ALPA rep, you got furloughed first. Do you really want to get rid of that? Do you want your upgrade to be "fair" instead of rewarding those who've been on property the longest?
It’s just a different culture at lxjt than you are used to at lasa. Over there, everything seems to be strictly seniority. At lxjt, like I said, not only the ILIW, which allows junior people to get extra days off, for example, that their seniority wouldn’t otherwise allow, but the contract also requires four phases of vacation bidding, and pilots of all seniority accruing five hours of sick bank per month. At lxjt the MEC (ALPA) decided to spread the love/pain on those few key contract pieces. Even the ILIW window isn’t a giveaway to the junior pilots as they are on equal footing as any other pilot. But it still does honor seniority a bit in that it allows people who are lineholders to improve their schedule before relief line holders get theirs built with the leftovers. But even that, I’ve seen dozens of pilots bid DOWN (exercising their seniority) into a relief line SPECIFICALLY to use smartpref and not deal with the ILIW.
Anyway, nothing is always completely set in stone. Just because the smartpref LOA envisions an ILIW, doesn’t mean lasa pilots cannot still influence a different outcome.