Let's say a brand new Delta pilot and a brand new SWA pilot both call in sick an average of 10 hours (11.49 TFP) per month starting on June 1 of whatever year (Delta defines a "sick year" as June 1 to May 31). That's about a 3-day every two months. Let's say the SWA pilot credit, on average, 100 straight TFP per month.
By May 31, the SWA pilot will have lost 13.8 TFP during the year while the Delta pilot will have been completely covered financially by their sick leave balance - all without having to produce a doctor's note.
I anticipate that you'll claim calling in sick for a three-day every couple of months is "unrealistic or "silly," or you'll assert that people who call in sick enough to have a zero sick leave balance are attempting to take advantage of the system.
Don't know how old you are, but there are lots of reasons why someone might have a low or zero sick leave balance, including:
- They have kids who get them sick frequently by bringing germs home from school
- They go to the gym a lot and work out intensely, thus being exposed to other's sicknesses and suppressing their immune function. This is one I've personally experienced quite often.
- They had a major illness, accident, or surgery of some sort. I've had several surgeries since arriving at SWA that have each taken me out for a month or more of recovery.
- They're getting older and get sick more often as a result of factors resulting from thymic involution.
- They've experienced or are experiencing an ongoing major personal event like a divorce, a family member with an illness or addiction, a kid who needs them, or the death or suicide of a loved one.
- They're struggling with some sort of mental health issue and know that if they seek treatment for that, our mental health benefits only last something like 18-24 months before being thrown out in the cold and they may never get their FAA medical back. So they call in sick frequently as a way to try to deal with their issue.
What are some of the reasons besides not getting sick that pilots at SWA who don't call in sick enough to use all of their sick leave balance might not call in sick even though they probably can't genuinely say that they meet the IMSAFE criteria?
- They're concerned about what might happen to themselves if they go out on disability and want as large of a sick balance to cover them for as long as possible in lieu of becoming officially persona non grata on our atrocious disability plan at the "LUV" corporation.
- They think not calling in sick "helps the company out" - but they don't think about the cascading effect of subsequent sick calls that ensue for both other pilots and FA's as a result of our "warrior" pilot getting them sick.
There are probably other reasons that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.
But suffice to say, my experience is that, if people really called in sick when they should and were not concerned with factors like the above, then most people's sick leave balances would probably be lower at SWA. IOW, our system built up around sick leave at SWA creates artificially high sick leave balances. That's great for the corporation. Not so great for human beings.
Even if you're flying 150 TFP a month all at premium, you're only earning roughly 10 TFP per month of sick time, depending on how the trips are rigged and so on. So even flying 150 all-premium TFP, we earn less than 75% as much no-note sick time as Delta pilots.
If I'm doing the math right, a SWA pilot would have to fly about 207 all-premium TFP per month to equal the no-note "accrual" rate of a Delta pilot. I'm not sure it's even possible to earn the same amount of no-note sick time as a Delta pilot flying all-straight time.
Would you prefer that we earn a flat 13.8 TFP (or more) of use-or-lose sick time per month along with a Delta-style disability plan, but we axe Delta's note-required sick leave accrual beyond 13.8 TFP per month?
As far as sick leave balances go, IMO, if they want to get rid of them, they're going to have to pay for the balances that our pilot group earned: at least one-for-one along with a premium for helping the company out by getting a liability off the books for the company.