Airline Pilot Central Forums - Contract negotiations

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Quote:

Originally Posted by captnate702 (Post 3363403)

Management is telling recurrent that we will be paid top tier rates and retirement? that's the first i've heard of this. Even if we get quality of life, what makes you think management will follow the rules or that an arbitrator will enforce the rules?

I also thought i had thousands in pending grievances but that all disappeared in the sap arbitration that we inexplicably lost. exco said that was a for sure win for us and we lost. After that arbitration, i am convinced that what we need to is top tier rates and retirement ($$$$$) because that is something management and/or an arbitrator cannot take away from us. i don't blame the exco, it should have been no brainer. can we go to court like they did for the pbs award? how could we not win that arbitration is beyond me.

besides, even with the contract taking 3 years, the new contract will get here sooner than your "possible" arbitration award for your thousands in grievances. exco says we are in arbitration every month, but we only hear about three arbitrations for all of 2021 and all three were losers (VFN, segment basis and sap). why do we only three arbitrations in a year? i heard we were in arbitration last week for reserve day pay; i am glad we go to arbitration when we can but how long is it realistically gonna take the union to arbitrate all of these grievances??

I disagree with the “take the money and run instead of work rules” sentiment. We won’t have this much leverage to improve our work rules for a long, long time. Like you said previously, MG is not the typical CEO and he will fight those work rules, but remember he has one foot out the door already. He has discussed multiple times in investor calls that he is actively finding a replacement and while he will still have a presence here, I don’t think it’s going to be the MG show here at G4 like it’s been all along. Several airlines have had similar pasts with spiteful management pushing back on contracts. It won’t be like this forever. And when the labor relations improve, I want a contract with good work rules already in place instead of fighting for them later on. I’m playing the long game with that mindset and I think that is what the Union is doing here as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wette460 (Post 3363437)

I totally agree with your sentiment that if MG leaves then we are WAY more likely to get the work rules that we need to be a big boy airline. I haven't really considered MG's retirement being soon ever since the pandemic took hold. I agree with you, the more MG moves toward retirement the better it is for improved labor relations. I too have played the long game here, and plan on keeping with the long game.

The reason all these arbitrations are happening is because management knows the current language is weak and exploits every possible grey area. Our contract is crap. There needs to be zero grey area. Everything needs to be defined, explained, and all possible scenarios written out. That will drastically reduce the number of arbitrations in the future. Also, there are ways to increase our QOL without complex language that the company can misinterpret. For starters, increase min days off for reserves...

Now is the time for leading work rules and pay. There has never been leverage like this before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by captnate702 (Post 3363378)

I am so tired of hearing all the talk about thousands and thousands of grievances. I know EXCO is doing what they can, but let's not kid ourselves, its not like anybody at management cares about all the grievances. We are supposedly in arbitration every month, but we haven't a lot to show for those arbitrations in a while. Not trying to play monday morning qb, but i also don't need to hear about the thousands of grievances on our fb page and AR's videos its starting to smell like the EXCO is trying to convince themselves that this is gonna work for us in the end. We just haven't seen results in a long time for the arbitrations every month strategy...

Screw grievances. Screw arbitrations. Just show me the money in our next contract.

Instructors got a huge payout with the 2020 instructor pay grievance, the premium pay for reserve was a 2020 award that paid many well. We now have clear VFN conflict rules. Yes, we lost the two most recent ones, but hey, we can’t win them all. However to say we never win, or grievances fail, or QOL isn’t achievable, that’s a stretch.

Let’s not forget GSAs - RONs, VFN on vacation, per diem for new hires, GOLD days… these are all settled QOL improvements in the last two years.

The company will want to pay use a large hourly rate and call that a new CBA. We can get that, plus new retirement, better reserve rules, extra vacation days/bidding rules and more if we don’t get frustrated and just ask for a simple Pay bump. And even if we have to grieve sections of our new CBA, eventually we will see gains like we’ve seen in my 5 years.

Breeze announced that they are sponsoring Australian nationals, and an Australian immigration form gets put into merlot documents? Crisis solved?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smallcheese12 (Post 3363620)

Breeze announced that they are sponsoring Australian nationals, and an Australian immigration form gets put into merlot documents? Crisis solved?

Australia has 25 million total people.

California alone has over 37 million people.

Not enough to go around and fix this mess.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smallcheese12 (Post 3363620)

Breeze announced that they are sponsoring Australian nationals, and an Australian immigration form gets put into merlot documents? Crisis solved?

They have internet down there. Breeze isn’t run by MG. Breeze’s bases so far aren’t our upper Midwest freezer box no where waste lands. Once they realize there’re going to FNT, they won’t be lining up to come here, not that they have those kind of numbers. No worries, MG says he’s got no problem filling them up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreshWater (Post 3363959)

You might be surprised at the Australians. Fly an A320 for bottom US wages and an Airbus type rating vs fly a single or light twin into the outback. The type actually matters because they typically have contacts in SE Asia and they favor having a type already with time in type vs here in the US where anyone hiring you will train you on whatever they're flying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JediCheese (Post 3364006)

Shrewd. Exactly what this place needs. Keep the revolving door, revolving. Our training department efficient, well-funded and fully staffed.

Well. That didn’t work out the way we planned. How many did we lose in the last month? 10 pilots? Looks like we are not as leveraged as we thought. Based on the last vacancy award the goal was 1129 pilots with the mid February new hire class. We are already at 1117. The attrition seems to be lower than they planned for.