Originally Posted by
Check Essential
The bankruptcy and the merger both came with relaxation of scope restrictions.
The latest outrage was the scope "settlement" that he didn't even bother to tell the pilots about before he signed it. (allowing still more 76 seat aircraft)
That was sold based on Moak's telling us we should fear that the contract might be interpreted wrong by an arbitrator. So we better not fight the grievance all the way. Too dangerous.
I don't have the contracts and LOAs in front of me right now but the number of permitted large RJs has risen steadily under Moak and that needs to stop.
Okay, that's just wrong. Before the merger, the limit on 70+ was 200 at Delta and 90 at Northwest. After the merger it was not 290 but 255 (a 12% reduction). Admittedly it is still in need of improvement, but if there were a 12% increase, you would be screaming bloody murder, so you should at least acknowledge in passing some forward movement.
Look at the DALPA web site under Committees > Negotiating Committee and find the LOA that permits more large RJ's. Post the language here. It is pretty weak to say, "Oh, there have been a bunch, but I am too lazy to actually read my contract." You can look and look and you won't find one since the bankruptcy deal. I do read my contract and every single agreement since bankruptcy that concerns scope has been a gain for pilots. Not massive gains, but you don't win the game by just hitting homers, you have to get singles and doubles too.
As for the grievance settlement. The last two grievances that were filed about large RJ's were filed by American and US Air. They both took the "ballsy" approach and went all the way to the arbitrator and didn't settle. Both pilot groups lost completely. Under our settlement, the company got to retain the RJ's they had on order, but they also agreed permanently to our interpretation of the contract. We also got furlough protection out of it. Again, if you can't even acknowledge the inherent risks of letting strangers decide things for you then you are living in a fantasy world.
Its the old "bait and switch," anytime someone brings up those numbers the typical response is "Well how many Pilots do they have on furlough?" The only problem with this comparison is that we would have similar furlough numbers were it not for all the early retirements.
Again, completely wrong. All but a few hundred of the early retirees would have been gone by December 2007 when the age 60 rule changed. Delta recalled hundreds of pilots and then hired another 700. American has about 2000 pilots on furlough. As I said above, they just lost a grievance about the number of RJ's and they lost another grievance about the minimum size of their pilot group. They have shrunk a lot.
If we are going to argue about the issues, it seems we should at least have some semblance of the truth buried into our basic assumptions. Assuming no gravity, I can fly my jet with very little fuel. I would be Al Gore's hero.