Originally Posted by
jsled
I agree with all you say. Another thought.... If the CAL FA TA is juicy enough, perhaps the new UAL could use it as a carrot to lure the UA FAs to vote IAM and assume the new IAM contract. The problem with this is that the CAL FA workrules would most probably result in huge surpluses when applied to the UAL FA ranks.
While boring holes over the Amazon last week, one of the FA's came up to talk about the "us v them" on the contract hot buttons.
I would have guessed the same thing you hit on as far as the 'surplus', but according to the CAL FA, the UAL FA's have a monthly "cap" they can fly. At CAL, there is no 'cap'. There are some (not uncommon actually) FA's pinning up 120+ hrs a month with trading & picking up of OT. With UA's lower 'cap' (82-85 hrs??)/rules on that topic, it supposedly would require a greater staffing to fly the same amount of block hour (and all things being equal). The other hot button is that UA's FAs have a 'rotating reserve' system (similar to AA) where no matter the seniority, every other (or every few months??) month an FA still sits a month of reserve....not so at CAL. Who knows, if the UA system on this topic is adopted, it just may get rid of a few of the CAL 'antiques' in the FA ranks.
Either way.....we have our own task at hand. Get the Pilot Group JCBA that we deserve to make up for the 'severely lacking' CBA's that presently reside under our 'pre-merger' lives.