Originally Posted by
andy171773
HUZZAH..the union has acknowledged our existence.
Here's how i see it..
I'm always on ALPAs side, and i really think that they're right about management being full of it. Here's why.
"Management does not want to discuss voluntaries"
You can compare this to FAs all you want, but the bottom line is, the FAs don't require sims/downgrades/seat displacements.
A voluntary furlough, if you look at what our contract says can be bypassed INDEFINITELY. Leaving the company in the precarious position of not knowing how many people are going to come back and when (as the one bypass for the invol. at least gives them the ability to say for sure 50/50 he'll either be on the list or off).
I think management, while stupid, knows that they need the staffing on hand to pick up some flying at a moments notice. Having guys on voluntary (obv DONT want to be there), would make it far more difficult to recall and restaff quickly when Delta changes something. The same thing goes for part time work, they may need guys to instantly step up and go. If a guy that wants part time GETS it, why would he say "ok i'll go back to 90 credit hours so i never get to see my bed again."
Secondly, training costs.
Now i know the precedence is definitely against us on this one. But the costs associated with taking a captain, downgrading him..bringing him to the sims for training..doing OE and a line check..having him sit right seat..(granted at lesser pay),,but then RE upgrading him..another OE and another line check.
The sims aren't cheap, and to do this to 100 guys would cost comair a FORTUNE. NOT to mention the FO associated sim costs for currency if they lapse on 3 months. Why not have the staffing on hand so that the airline can actually have consistent 100% completion days (weather permitting), and not junior man anyone? Seems more cost effective to me..but i'm just a schmoe.
NO one would break guarantee, staffing wouldn't be an issue, Selvaggio can sleep soundly in his power ranger pajamas at night.
Thirdly..the new hires
Why bring them through IOE? Let's say these guys finish IOE with 40-50 hours (if that). They get furloughed october 5th. The majority of us get furloughed november 5th. Recalls start in mid december. These new guys are going to be very close, if not WELL outside their "100 hours in 120 days". Which means back to the sims, and more cash money. Comair finishing these guys is a flagrant waste of money and time if they expect furloughs to be prolonged. (Yes, even though they bought all the sim time anyways.)..It just really doesn't make sense...I think it's even outside of mgmts usual idiocy.
I'm not saying all the furloughs are a joke, it wouldn't surprise me to see 50 downgrades and 100 furloughs (newbies sorry).
But I'm sorry, the information isn't exactly crystal coming from the company either. It seems to me that they're purposely hazing their side up and then throwing ALPA in the dirt to get us ****ed off, ALPA just wasn't communicating as well as they should have been.
The block hour reductions and the companys CURRENT level of JM's Displacements (i know i know, IOEs..still) don't jive with this in my opinion.
Well written, and I agree with much of it.
In the end though, I suspect whatever money is wasted is unimportant to Delta, who has a history of poor financial decisions. In the end, the money that is thrown away isn't management's to begin with...it's the stockholders' and creditors', and Delta, with bankruptcy courts in their pocket, knows in the end it doesn't matter how much money they waste.
As long as on paper the merger looks like it will produce more profitability over the long run than status quo, Delta will waste huge amounts of money to make it a reality...as they probably should.
Just look at how much money has Delta wasted hiring and training 200 of us whom they are going to furlough three or four months later.
Expense doesn't really matter at our position on the totem pole. That's a big part of the reason the "profit sharing" is such a joke. We're discussing this from our perspective, as if six or eight million dollars or so in training/retraining costs is a large number. This number is nothing from Atlanta's perspective.