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.
In the end everything with the PWA and the company is a cost. It's nothing personal. There is a cost to carrying excess personnel in every business. Can all the jobs be preserved? Yes at a cost and at the expense of something else. The price tag from the company is too high right now. You may be able to argue the cost claimed by the Union is too low. Agree to what that amount is and then let the union internally decide the mechanism of how to achieve it. We get bogged down in conspiracy theories and the mechanisms in place to execute those theories.
With regards to the minimum balance. The majority of the group that would have been eligible had not been furloughed or only encountered a short furlough. The middle seniority group is who had the long furloughs. Since they were junior around 9/11 they did not have much vested in the pension. However, the age 65 hit was big. No movement for furlough plus an additional 5 years of stagnation. Delaying moving to the left seat by 5 years is a massive hit on compounding for retirement when your only vehicle available from the company is a 401. The minimum balance was extremely unpopular in a lot of this group. Much of that group was also caught without reinstatement rights. The biggest issue imo for the furloughee is protecting future seat progression and funding their 401 when there is time for compounding.