Originally Posted by Sink r8

Actually, there is another angle to this, which ties into Scambo's argument. While I don't think he's understanding our own "me-too" caluse, the fact of the matter remains that others have "me-too" clauses as well, contractual or not: everytime we get something, everyone else gets a free ride, with the attendant costs.

Now, this is not our problem, in the sense that we can't fall for the company's argument that they couldn't afford to give us X because they "have" to give it to everyone else. However, I recently had a Captain explain how it would be useless to go for a high % "headline" number on the raise, because most "me-too's" are geared to % raises. He argues there are a lot of other ways to make more money, i.e. within our workrules, which could work with a fairly low total payraise, i.e. trips touching, training pay, night rates, international rates, DC contributions, reserve pay, trip rigs, etc. That's not a bad argument. It also addresses another point, which is that we're always totally engrossed with the payrate increase, and miss everything else. Like scope.

It might make for great press that we're not asking for huge payrate increases, or pay restoration, but asking merely for contract "repair" or something like that. And it would be very difficult for the other groups (which still have retirements) to get a "me-too" if our DC contributions (tax-deferred, mind you) were to jump, say, 10%.

If my W-2 goes up a lot, and my DC plan contributions go up a lot, and my life is better, I don't really care if the Street thinks I "only" got a small % increase.