Originally Posted by
Bill80
You're not going to convince the company or NMB to sizably increase the pension without ending it for new hires. Because it's not just about cost, it's mostly about risk management.
You guys are headed down a path where older pilots will get a multiplier bump to the pension, and everyone gets a small % increase in the B plan, and everyone loses from what was offered in TA1's retirement.
You are so believing the "get us a TA now" group. Our pension has not "cost" the company anything for five years. They have not put in any additional funds. Of course that fund is not just for the pilots, but for everyone on property that still has a pension. It's not going away. They are only trying to get us to settle for getting rid of our A plan. I'd love to know what the "cost/money" that was allocated to the pension in contract 2015. I feel pretty sure that the company never put that much money into our retirement. So they still owe us those funds. I know the value of the retirement "gains" that was postulated for TA1 could not be substantiated by anyone. The best answer I ever got was ALPA National did the calculations. WTF???
All of our current contract calculations are for retiring at 60 and they should be. IF you go longer, then it's your choice. But you were fully funded to retire at age 60/25 YOS. The new way of thinking is Using age 65 to show compounding moneys is disingenuous. Of course 5 more years of compounding will have more money. BUT you could have already been retired for 5 years. That's really the goal. To retire. The sooner you can afford to retire, the better for your family, your longevity, etc. Continuing to show data for age 65 is just wrong, and the union should quit doing that.
Our guys cannot answer basic questions that I think should be almost common knowledge. What is the average number of months a pilot lives or draws retirement? How has that number been affected with age 65 retirements? What portion of the "retirement pool" are the pilots? How much did the company contribute towards our retirement over the life of the previous contract? Then maybe some more difficult questions. If we take our current portion of the pool how much could we afford to increase each pilots retirement without going below the 90% lower limit? For every pilot that goes to 65 vs 60 their actual payout will be less, so how does that affect the pool? If they go longer and thus have a shorter lifespan, shouldn't an age 65 retirement be more per year?
Sorry, I started to just ramble in my brain.