Originally Posted by
p3flteng
Its a good idea in principal, some thoughts:
what do you say to those pilots who are senior on the list that already went through furloughs with no help and then got shafted in bankruptcy and lost their pension? Those guys were called out for trying to get overweighted retirement improvements in the recent contract discussions (precovid). My position was inline with most mid seniority to junior pilots...Sorry, but to take from the young to fund the senior 15 years later is not a viable solution. Hence it’s a hard argument to say to them, well the shoes on the other foot now, so help me now when I was unwilling to support making said dead zoner retirements whole.
second, many guys might have an issue with people getting 40k while not actually doing anything to earn it. Spitballing, but how about you make it a loan to said furloughed pilots, who when theyAre back on property have an additional dues deduction to repay said funds, say 3% until the ‘loan’ is repaid? This money can go back into a special account, and eventually it gets repaid to the initial pilots who had the additional funds withheld to help the furloughed guys.
not sure about the tax implications...for any of this.
its pretty clear the company doesn’t give a sh!t about these guys, and are willing to sacrifice them on the alter of a contract / work rule reset....so anything we can do to help with in reason should be on the table for discussion.
Good point on the retirement benefits discussion. I fell into the junior but ok with giving them a little extra camp. I had a lot of peers try to convince me otherwise, so I know I was in the minority there. I can see how a senior pilot might be turned off by the idea of giving to help a junior guy who so recently wouldn’t do the same.
To them I would say this is about protecting our profession. I’ve heard too many times how much better the job used to be. The reason for the degradation of our profession in my opinion is negotiating away our contract in crisis with the losses never to be regained. This is a way out of that box.
We as a group are left with a decision:
1) do nothing and see what happens
2) have ALPA do something to help the furloughed. (Cobra is a great idea and I’m glad we voted it in)
3) negotiate with the company to “save the furloughs.”
ALL of those choices have various advantages and disadvantages, and each of us need to consider what we think is the correct way forward.
From what I’ve read/heard most don’t want to do option 1, but if you are in that camp I don’t besmirch you. As stated each option has advantages.
My proposal is an expansion on option 2.
As for option 3. The last time through this ALPA did negotiate, and achieved a “no furloughs” agreement... until the company had other ideas. Meanwhile some of the givebacks have never returned and others only very recently returned. For this reason I’m more in favor of option 2 than option 3.
So far ALPA has done a lot with voting to providing healthcare. Now I say we can look at expanding to financial care. A lot of the feedback has been to structure the benefit as a loan. When drafting the idea, I had considered this but it seemed improper to ask for what some will view as a lifeline back. I do see the advantages of a loan protecting the recipient’s pride and at the same time being more palatable to the “I got through it so will you” crowd.
This kind of was one of the main reasons for starting this thread. To see if there is a way to make this idea agreeable to most of us. Thank you to all who have had constructive feedback.