Originally Posted by
01110011
I don’t really get this. It’s not “fixing a company issue”, it’s making certain aspects of the job better. No amount of extra cash would get me to upgrade into reserve, but if they fixed reserve I’d happily upgrade and take the extra cash. That’s a perk for me that happens to help the company with staffing.
These are work rule, pay, benefits improvements. Unless you mean work rule, pay, and benefits improvements but only for lineholders?
Just because it benefits the company doesn’t mean it’s bad for us and vice versa. Options are good. It would be nice to make reserve more viable for people who aren’t solely motivated by money from an upgrade or WB flying. Right now we have some incredibly cushy gigs and some incredibly crummy ones. You can make the crummy ones better without making the cushy gigs suck. Reserve could be something desired, not dreaded. We could tweak it so that those that want to make money can make money being on reserve and those that want less stick time can preference not flying.
Bad reserve rules are definitely our problem. They might not be for you today, but if we find ourselves in crummy economic times down the road reserve might not “be a choice” anymore and negotiating improvements there now will pay dividends.
I’m not arguing what needs to be done, I’m saying that we don’t need to pay for it by giving in other areas. If reserve was more palatable people would upgrade. I’d agree, money obviously doesn’t motivate people to bid into reserve as it is now. I’d personally bid from pretty senior NB captain back to NB FO before I dealt with reserve as it’s written. Reserve definitely needs fixed, but not at our expense. They seem to find the money to prop up the regionals, electric aircraft, etc. While they're at it, they can spend the money to fix their staffing issues, or deal with the consequences. Without a change it’s only going to get worse. The deliveries haven’t really started yet and we can’t get people to fill vacancies. My focus is on gaining the biggest gains for the entire group. That comes from tightening scope, improving pay rates, vacation and sick leave accrual and pay, retirement, reassignment protections, etc. The biggest gains for the group would be met by focusing on these things. Reserve needs to definitely be addressed, but at the company’s expense, not ours.