FWIW Andrew also entertained the idea of an industry snap up clause.

 

I think that’s a great idea. I know management put that in their pass in the spring but the “peer group” was ULCC only including breeze and avelo.

Not sure how that would work now with spirit being acquired by JetBlue. The snap up clause is all about who the peer group is, if it’s the entire narrow body industry, then we have Delta and avelo in the same “peer group” which is just awkward. Whatever, they can figure that out. A snap up is a must have imo because that way we are basically guaranteed to never go a year without a pay increase even after the contract expires.

 

Compensation is the easy part to negotiate. New hires will only see compensation as that is what is visible, we will need strong compensation to be competitive. Its the work rules that new hires do not understand that has to be gotten right.

 

I'm onboard with the extra assessment. I want money in the war chest to show the company we're serious and can't be pushed around. I want money available to hire outside experts if necessary.

Did they run a 2nd August class and if they did, how many showed up?

 

Most of us we onboard with it but with 10 mil in the bank it isn't gonna help you get a contract any sooner. Just a ridiculous union slush fund at this point

 

You should watch the video again, you have completely twisted a lot he said. Why would you not save compensation for last since the industry is rapidly changing??? Rates also depend on the work rules that should be TA’d first. That’s negotiation 101, not slow rolling! He never said they are waiting for other airlines, what was said is if we have a TA first it must be industry leading as apposed to industry average, along with a me too clause so we aren't on the bottom again. That is VERY far from the conclusions you just made up.

As far as dues, we have more grievances than all other major airlines combined, which isn’t cheap. Still a great overall win rate even with recent loses. Our union is able to receive more of our dues with the new local, think union gross pay = net pay. The company tactics to drain the union’s finances are far from over. The assessment will end when we TA a contract in about 3-4 years. We don’t want to run out of money before then. I would rather overpay and have a surplus which at that point we could possibly never have to pay ANY dues ever again if the union is able to run from interest off the surplus pot.

 

I'm fine with a war chest as well, but at what point is it enough? $30m? $50m?

The fact that the war chest has grown to $10m so quickly is pretty remarkable considering our latest LM-2 Annual Report showed $6.084m in cash on hand as of 12/31/21. Again not opposed to funding the union, but the additional assessment was sold to us as a temporary assessment to build a war chest for arbitrations, etc. $10m is a lot of money for attorney's fees...

 

of course... THE GRIEVANCES. i thought the union put in that software so that hundreds of grievances a month by just a couple clicks? But wait, THE GRIEVANCES. click click click... file file file because more GRIEVANCES is what we need.


KC - "thou doth protest too much..." The fact of the matter is that the negotiations cannot get serious until compensation is on the table. Andrew said he is not putting comp on the table because "it is a moving target..." So when does the target stop moving? Union reps have been saying since January when management put out there "big" offer that the Union would not put compensation on paper until one of the legacies TA'd their comp because they will not allow us to be leapfrogged again.

I don't think we are saying different things KC135, we have both been on here for a while saying negotiations will last until at least 2025-2026. We both agree that negotiations will take a while, you put the blame solely on management dragging their feet. Meanwhile AR confirmed on his video exactly what union reps have been telling me since management made their "big" offer in January: that the union was going to wait for legacy rates to become public before they would even discuss compensation with the company (remember: previous videos AR said that they wouldn't discuss compensation until sections 18 and 19 were TA'd).

its okay to talk about risk/reward with the Union's strategy. this is not the fb forum where people get shouted down and called scabs just because we don't always drink the union kool aid.

 

I think it self expires on signing of new contract.

 

I came in after the temporary assessment so I can't say why they were levied initially.

But saying that, attorneys are expensive. Good and experienced attorneys in RLA are very expensive. I'd rather have too much saved up instead of not enough. And that's only one potential expense we may have to pay out for.

In case you are wondering, ALPA has $8,000 per member in assets on their last LM-2 form. That would put us at $8 mil for our pilot group at the same ratio, but we have none of the added resources of locals having extra assets to work with or extra redundancy by working for multiple airlines.