Originally Posted by
Biffsteritis
MM just confuses the issue surrounding the AQP LOA in his podcast. We do have leverage if we don’t agree to the LOA. The company has been, for the last few years, putting together the pieces for an AQP program and It will soon be ready for implementation. The pilots have to approve it via an LOA as it will change our current book (cba). We want it, they want it, but we don’t want to give it up for free.
Why does the company want AQP? It costs a ton of money to start up, but the future cost savings are huge! If we don’t agree to an LOA we block their cost savings. That’s the leverage. Give us some of the things we want and we’ll be open to AQP (even though we want it too).
I’d love to hear the counterpoint in the event I’m missing something.
Easy. I just went to recurrent. Spoke with the union and have spoken with sim instructors and other union pilots. ALPA national estimates AQP will save the company $1 million a year. That’s it. And that’s just for the AQP program itself, not doing training in MCO which will obviously save the company more. My understanding is that AQP is outside of the cba and can be implemented with or without an LOA. 169 seems to think we have leverage. Boy I wish that were true, but it’s simply not. At best we can hope to get some work rules for the Sim instructors, that is all. There will be no financial gain from this LOA for us. So having said that since the company can implement this with or without us, we might as well be involved so we can be a part of the process of the training program.. I’m never in favor of doing LOA’s while we’re in section 6 but in this instance, it seems stupid not to be a part of it. I would love to ask for a 10% raise with this LOA, but it’s just not happening. Where our union has really failed yet again is communication. We’re all getting secondhand information and hearsay instead of constant communication from the union that we pay a lot of money in dues to.