Originally Posted by cactusmike
Just to stir the sh## here, AWA negotiators walked out of merger talks with the AAA guys this week because AAA is insisting on date of hire and bringing furloughed guys back on ahead of active AWA pilots.
Both ideas are deader than an armadillo crossing I 10.
Looks like arbitration to me. We (AWA) are only asking for relative seniority, i.e. if you are 50th percentile on your present seniority list then you are 50th percentile in the merged list.
It isn't a stir and I don't really get emotional about it. Date of hire with furloughed guys coming back in front of active AWA guys is not fair, I agree. What also wouldn't be fair though is that the active AWA guys gain the benefit of 3000 retirements over the next ten years while not giving anything back in return. Wouldn't you agree ?
The only fair option, in my humble opinion, is for there to be some really serious fences put up to protect both groups. I would like to see PHX fenced off from USAirways pilots in some manner for a long time. I would also like to see my career expectation of being a widebody captain for the last five years of my career at USAirways preserved. How that can happen I don't know. One possibility is for guys like me to keep date of hire for bidding widebody trans-Atlantic flying. Or perhaps to keep date of hire for bidding CLT, PIT, and PHL domiciles while AWA guys keep relative seniority for bidding any Hawaii flying and PHX and LAS bases.
Obviouolsy USAirways guys are going to want date of hire while AWA guys are going to want relative seniority. Neither works as a fair integration because of the inherent disparities between the two groups.
TP