Originally Posted by
Podracer
Any advice to a former long time regional guy on how to gauge leverage and not become too passive? I don't have a frame of reference except the regionals. I'm in year 4 and still in my honeymoon phase and feeling awash with privilege and riches. Compared to the regional grind my life has improved immensely in every possible way. I was a lot more militant in the regionals because I knew dam well I was being exploited, whipsawed, and getting a tiny crumb of the pie. Now, the status quo feels amazing when it used to be torture. Before I had what was happening at mainline to compare myself to, whereas now I am at mainline. Before I knew DAM WELL I was getting robbed and disrespected, now I'm getting treated and compensated how I felt I deserved.
Everything after the present is a new horizon and a situation I've never been in. I've never been in a pilot group with any power or say in anything at all. In the regionals we were at the whim of the market and whipsaw. We got raises when the company was forced by cancelling flights for lack of pilots, not because we negotiated or used any labor power. I've never had to look at contract cycles in this way. How do I not get too complacent? How do you actually gauge how high or low the bar should be? How bold should we be? How confident can we be in our ability to use legal job actions. How concerned should we be for the long term stability of the company? I don't even know what questions I should be asking. I just know this will be my first new contract at a mainline job and it's hard for me to imagine anything being better than this, while also feeling lost at how to approach this new situation.
I don't want to needlessly vote yes on something when it makes no sense just because I still have regional pilot brain.
In general we have looked to the past and compare rates to the best we've had adjusted for inflation. Inflation is the ceaseless enemy that must be met and exceeded for real wage gains. Healthcare is another big piece for me because once upon a time it was free (included as part of the compensation) all of it with no deductibles or savings required. Retirement is an issue because there is no certainty anymore. How much is enough? QOL is an issue mostly as it relates to work life balance and health. Long days outside the circadian rhythm with poor rest in unfamiliar hotels with no environmental controls (temp, noise etc.) used to be the norm. We will never make the job as routine as a 9 to 5 but putting guard rails on the damaging schedule is reasonable.
Finally, the health of the company... don't worry about it, our management won't make any deal that places too much risk on the enterprise. Having been through a bankruptcy, it's never employee compensation that kills a company it's market forces. The one thing we have going for us is that the MIP is tied to profit and profit sharing, meaning our highly compensated leaders need everyone to succeed for their personal success and shareholder success. The profit sharing experiment has proven highly useful and rewarding. We pay the highest amount of shared profit among employees in the world which means we are rewarded for the success of the company and in turn have become the most successful airline ever since the inception of the profit sharing program. We are all in this together and employee compensation is a cost like any other. When it increases uniformly across the industry it becomes boilerplate. Just like fuel, the input costs change and the company adapts. Getting too far outside the industry can be a risk but me too clauses make it temporary. Hope this helped.