Originally Posted by
REF 5
Their are definitely provisions in our current CBA that need attention. I would argue though that our health care is pretty damn good here. All of my friends at other carriers have to pay premium's in their health insurance plans. We do not unless you choose the choice plans. Max out of pocket of 2500 bucks which includes prescriptions. I haven't had to pay premiums in years. That's a big cost. The other is scope/code sharing. Nobody has the restrictions that we do. The other three have PBS. No thank you. None of them have had 100% retro. No thank you again. I'll take mine. Current CBA gives a 15% NEC. Thats worth 2.5-3.0 million depending what age you get hired here. Thats only the company contribution. That didn't even exist six years ago. Personally I think we should do away with profit sharing as a "benefit". I'll take that in more NEC funding. Sick time and disability need to be revamped. 100% agree on that. We should have the ability to cash a portion of that out and be tied only to sick. That is an 800 million asset to the pilot group we can't get to. And it's also tied to disability. That needs to change.
I see where you are coming from, especially over the last two years here. It has been a ****** show for sure. Seems we roll from crisis into the next. That is concerning. The pilot pool is dwindling and it's not going to get better anytime soon. WE definitely need industry leading BUT don't take away my healthcare, code sharing/scope. And leave PBS to others. It's healthy to challenge and speak truth to power whether it's the CEO or the SWAPA president. This place has never had a lead industry contract. To get it we may have to walk. Im ready. Vote yes on the SAV and save your money.
I agree with the points you made about our health care under The Regular Plan being decent on paper (though it could always be better). What I do think is deficient about our health care plans is the administration of them. Nearly every claim I have submitted over the last five years has ended up needing to be dealt with by Kerrey at Resolute Health Care Advisors due to some sort of claim rejection or underpayment. So, on paper, The Regular Plan is decent. In practice, it is severely lacking in my own experience but especially as evidenced by the stories I've heard about our pilots or their family members dealing with serious medical situations and then also having to deal with the stress of rejected claims and the bureaucracy of trying to get them processed correctly.
And then on the NEC, we are industry-lagging on the company contribution rate and severely lagging in our career retirement fund accumulation. Given our career-average hourly/TFP rates compared to the typical lifetime progression at our peer Big Three airlines, FedEx, and UPS, we would need a dramatically better NEC contribution than them to pull even in terms of end-of-career retirement fund amounts with them. I'm not a tax expert, so even dramatically better rates may not be able to do it once IRS limitations are taken into account (not sure).
Given the amount of hassle involved with the processing of our medical claims, I think it is reasonable to include in C2020 a contractual provision that would allow us to file for reimbursement by our seat position and longevity for the time we have to spend dealing with getting medical claims processed correctly.