No **** sherlock that is why until the end of the year when the total pay for the year is added you will make more, hourly vs total pay.
But hey I expect nothing more from a management do boy like yourself than to argue semantics all the while ignoring the real issue.
I think there is a exec that needs their shoes shined, better get yourself over there right away.

Yeah...you sound like a real winner. Why don't you go to Delta then and stop your ****ing and moaning? Oh wait...you're a loser and Delta won't hire you. Got it. Typical.

Enjoy your miserable life, loser!!

I would assume by that point you'd be at FedEx, yes ?

Why would you stay at AA and remain at the back of the compensation conga line for the next decade when FedEx will take you in a heartbeat ?

You are a complete moron. Or a complete fool. Probably both.

The wages were at bankruptcy rates because that's how Doug likes it. ALPA (not USAPA, and that's not to defend USAPA, but to educate idiots like you) negotiated junk terms and he took advantage.

The people who were on the other side of the table from USAPA are the same filth that are now on the other side of the table from APA. APA has negotiated junk terms and Doug will once again take advantage of that.

They are in the process of showing the industry who is the new 'laughing stock'. That means you and others like you. Embrace it you fool.

The LAX reps cut lose from the union and joined Glass. Wilson sat by, then sanctioned Kirby direct negotiations. Then the chairman of the negotiating committee conceded defeat openly to anyone who would listen, then posted on a public forum.

Talk about DFR breach by the numbers...

Thought APA was better/smarter than that...

At least we have a union to count on that will give up scope so we can get our next pay raise..

At this point, the company has no real vested interest in caving in to give APA everything it wants. I know some of you think the company is willing to pay just about anything to get HBT and I/D combinations, but I think most of you have grossly over-valued those items and the willingness of management to get those changes.

The problem is we already have a contract. This vote is simply an amendment to that contract. Management has already costed out the previous contract, and they were prepared to work under that contract. Saying no at this point does nothing but tell the company to pound sand and support the "we sure told them" attitudes.

For those of you who think Parker and Kirby sit around in their offices and in their homes plotting of new ways to screw pilots, you shouldn't give yourselves that much credit. I really don't think they do. Our contract is one of many rocks they have to deal with on a daily basis. Is it a big deal? Sure, it's a big deal, but it's not the only deal and I really don't think they give a crap whether we take their offer or not. Obviously they would prefer we did so they could move forward with some efficiencies, but outside of that, they really don't care.

The truth is we're not going to see Min Calendar Day, Group III A321 pay, improved LTD, full LOS or any of those other things, even if we vote this down. I'd be willing to bet on it. So the choices are either live with the Green Book and the lower MTA pay, or take a deal that implements the Green Book plus a few structural changes and get higher pay. That's really the choices ahead.

And spare me the "inmates" comparison. Jeez, you guys are full of rhetoric. It's not a prison, you are free to leave at any point...and this job is certainly far from the worst job I've ever had...actually, minus the commuting, it's the best job I've had so far.

It seems to me that the only thing the company really wants is HBT for the 787, everything else they can work around. Intl/dom they can just not open intl US bases. And I'm not sure they are excluded from getting HBT in arbitration. People are making big assumptions without the facts and many have forgotten the big claims, and losses on previous arbitrations.

Kasher will pay anyone? Any Alaska pilots reading this want to share the experience a few years back and what the predictions were?

Agreed that Parker & Co. have no reason not to probe both APA and this pilot group to find out exactly what we are about. Why should Parker roll over now ?

Parker can always come back to the table at some future point as he did at Envoy and several times. But once we demonstrate our willingness to feed upon each other for personal gain philosophy, we are that much weaker next time. The slightly higher pay and slightly sooner isn't worth the damage to our future from my perspective. So far, Parker and Glass have made a embarrassing mockery out of this union leadership and if the pilots don't correct that, we'll pay dearly in the future.

The slightly better and slightly quicker raises will cost us ten times that in the long run.

The process that's been playing out at Eagle/Envoy isn't the same process that's playing out here. There's already an end-game set in writing for our JCBA process. With the Envoy pilots, it's open-ended...much like how it will be when this contract ends. In 2020, it may take several rebuffs of the company to get them to play ball. I think we'll all be prepared to do so at that time. Pay, while not "industry leading", will be in the ballpark of industry standard so there shouldn't be any whining about pay rates by then. I would hope that 2020 is more about getting QOL issues than industry-leading pay. Gradual steps is the key.

Actually they are VERY much the same. The same strategy is being used and so far, it appears the same results. The SPECIFICS aren't the issue, but that's exactly the subterfuge Parker and Glass hope to distract us with. It appears it has worked perfectly on you, though.

There will be no more "gradual steps". Take a look at the weakness our fractured BOD has exhibited. They look like the Keystone Cops. If the pilots fall prey to the same behavior, come 2020, we'll be in even worse shape. But, that doesn't change the fact that Parker will consider that to be a quid-pro-quo negotiation essentially once again TRADING work rules and other contractual provisions to offset the cost of pay raises which are still likely to be not "industry leading" JUST AS WE ARE DOING NOW.

It's clear to me you simply are unable or unwilling to understand both the devastating ramifications of bypassing our last opportunity to be relevant to PARKER from a cohesive union standpoint or an entity with negotiating leverage. Again, since we will have little that's truly of value to him as scheduling, insurance, disability and pensions have all been gutted, the last bastion will be scope and trading Group I for more pay raises.

Heck, at that point it's likely the general consensus of most of us close to retirement will be "why not", gimme my money !

A yes vote for this now essentially means we have just committed seppuku. If that occurs, in 2020, I'll be willing to give Parker anything he wants for a few more bucks in my last years because we won't even be a union then (well, actually we aren't one now, just an association), we'll be 15,000 (likely substantially less) independent contractors all looking out for #1 and isn't that what Parker ultimately wants and why he brought in Jerry Glass and what's Jerry's specialty ?

Union busting.

He doesn't do it overnight, but begins by destroying its foundation until it does what it's doing here right this very minute.

Collapsing under its OWN weight.

At this rate, all they will have to do in 2020, is show up at the rubble and collect what left that has value to them.

DOOM! GLOOM! ALL IS LOST! Better start calling that truck driving school. Truckmasters, right?

You really should think about a management position.

Unless, of course, you're already in one. ;)

And what's wrong with that? You make it sound like it's a bad thing for someone to advance their career into a higher position.

I have no qualms with people in management. They have a job to do. If you think they take those positions just to make your life hard, then you have a problem. Chill out. And no, I don't want a management job. If I wanted to do that I would have stayed in the Air Force and gone to the Pentagon. I like flying airplanes.

I agree. People like Eaglefly actually believe that Doug Parker sits in his office everyday thinking, "How can I screw the pilots today?" They actually think that management spends all their time thinking of ways to hurt employees.

He was being facetious Einstein.

What they think about is how much will it take to get the APA to vote for a contract with 50.1% support. That is what they want to pay. The rest can be spent on bonuses and profit sharing for mgmt.

It depends on your definition of hurt. What do you think is a fair amount for a pilot to make?
Are AMR pilots deserving to make at least as much as Delta / UCH pilots?
Mgmt doesn't want a strike, but they surely don't want to match Delta and offer profit sharing and such if they can get APA a contract for 20% less.

The point is that it is disingenuous to come here as a mgmt employee and try and get employees to settle for less then their peers at similar corporations.

If he wants to be mgmt, so be it, but that negotiation won't be handled by APA that will be direct with the corporation.

Except that's not what's going on here. You guys and your conspiracy theories...geez. Just in case you didn't notice, Eaglefly thinks every pilot who doesn't automatically vilify management and adopt his "rain cloud" approach is management or a management wanna-be.

Huey, management will furlough you in a second to save a nickel.

They don't give a flying fu(k about you. Maybe EF understands that.

I promise you I understand that. Airline management isn't any different from any other workplace. I don't understand why you guys think that people coming from outside the airline world must have had a different landscape to deal with? Do you think that other employers won't furlough or lay people off? Give me a break...

No break,

Like you I came from the military, I cannot believe the BS this management, chief pilot level, has tried to pull.

As far as upper levels, they do sit around and try to figure ways to steal money from you.

As far as other employers, being furloughed is different, there is no industry like ours, take a 10 year captain, hire him, throw him on the bottom of a list, then furlough him.

BS? Like having an assignment that I was promised through a previous commander canceled by a new box-checker commander? Or having a supervisor deny leave simply because he didn't understand how leave/passes work (long story)? Or the unit where everyone treaded lightly because we had six commander-directed downgrades in the span of a few months (out of 12 pilots...it was a C-21 detachment)?

Or how about being threatened with NJP if I didn't pay a $2,500 hotel bill because the finance guys were "backed up" and my government credit card was 2 months past due? Or how about the time that my friend (who was a great pilot and a good officer...just wasn't a golden boy) got a surprise RIF notification while we were deployed? And that they extended his separation date so he could finish his deployment? "Bad news is you don't have a job when you get back. Good news is we got your separation date extended so you can finish your 6 month deployment!"

Or how about the flight engineer in my squadron who got Letter or Reprimand because his wife sent him a battery-powered alarm clock in the mail while we were in Kuwait...and when the alarm went off in the package, they had EOD blow it up because they thought it was a bomb? He didn't get his alarm clock, AND he had his career f*cked.

Hey, I get it. We've all had bad bosses. I don't know where you worked in the military, but I've seen plenty of horrible commanders and supervisors that jerked people around on a regular basis. At least here we have a process to grieve things we feel were wrongly dealt with.

And I really think you overestimate how much time the upper level management spends dwelling on this stuff. They hire guys like Glass and tell their middle management "don't exceed this cost" and then let the dogs loose. In the end, all they really look at are the cost valuations for the entire deal...they couldn't care less how much time you do or don't work.

This is probably the most intelligent post I have read on here. They don't care about anything other than the bottom line. They see numbers and figures, and not scheming ways to screw you.

Hey Tex, paying you less or making you work more days with crappier work rules is screwing you.

Huey, I never quantified how much time they spent on it, just that they do and your incoming boss has zero obligation to honor the promises of the outgoing boss.

The rest of that stuff that happened in your units, well, you Air Force boys have issues.

Think of the future options management has with this pilot group. It's likely Parker being the smart cookie he is will dust off the divide and conquer strategy in 2020 just as he's successfully using now. If I were Parker, I'd orchestrate some excuse to threaten a furlough like Horton did in 2012 when he said he'd furlough 400 to influence the C13 contract negotiation (at the same time Hale accidentally made it public he'd be short about that amount for the summer 2012 schedule). If he can make the junior minority a piñata in a furlough threat game, he can get them to beg the majority to save them with concessions (which they won't). Another option is to use that to move Group 1 scope to the Eagle system along with junior pilots and give nice raises for the majority in exchange for no furloughs.

Again, there's a thousand and one ways to play this gullible pilot group against each other and we all see now that this is a VERY effective strategy. 2020 is going to be a complete mess. As it stands now, most a Group III pilots will end up in Group II (pay cuts) and if he places a nice order for Group 1 to replace most of the S80's, many Group II go to Group I (pay cuts). It may just be for many, the pay raises they thought would propel them upwards are simply temporary payoffs that will be recouped in the future leaving many no better off for handing over more work rules. The above is also a nice foundation for 2020 to put the junior minority in peril by offering $$$ to,the majority.

I wouldn't wanna bet how THAT vote would go. :eek:

Why do you think people are trying to get out of the Air Force? It's not like it used to be. I don't know when you were in the military, but a lot's changed even since I started flying in 1996. And after non-stop deployments (I spent nearly 3 of the last 6 years on active-duty deployed) I don't see how they can convince enough people to stay. Not for that kind of nonsense, and not when they are reducing benefits and keeping pay stagnant.

Huey,

You and I are probably not to far apart in age and have similar backgrounds so we have a long ways to go in this industry. I can understand why you see things as rosy compared to the military but this appears to be your first job under a collective bargaining agreement. Here's some important takeaways: nothing happens fast in negotiations. The fact that management is rushing you into a deal should seem odd considering they almost always slow negotiations down to their benefit. Second, you're absolutely rifgt, management doesn't sit around planning your demise, but they do follow the negotiating playbook. And again it's not personal to them, just business, but it also requires us to take the appropriate response to each one of those steps. They're going for a very early kill here, and it's rather unusual because usually a pilot group would see this coming a mile away and the next play would be made and so on and so forth.

Finally, past practice has proven that pilots make significant gains in times of economic prosperity, and take concessions in times of economic recession. Never in history has a pilot group taken concessions during times of economic prosperity. You have a lot of leverage. They just don't want you to know that. This isn't 2001 or 2004 or 2007. The rush to get a deal is because they know each day the economy gets stronger, oil gets cheaper, and you watch your peers at DL and UA make more than you, you become more empowered

Those numbers and figures have to be based on something attainable. The weaker you are, the lower the baseline for those figures. In typical contract negotiations regarding compensation, there's a concept referred to as "the box". The goal of both sides is make that box initially as big as possible in the hope of moving the middle point closer to their side. There was no box here, nor true negotiation. Parker feels he simply has to establish himself as a tough negotiator NOW to maintain leverage in the future, even if he should not have it in a particular situation and thus yes, there is a "bottom line ", but there also is an emotional component in play.

Even APA admitted it in some of their valuations of Parker quibbling over 50 million when they're projected to rake in 12 billion in 2014/15. Considering how weak and out of control we are projecting ourselves to be, Parker would be a fool to go any lower then necessary which is not likely his bottom line. Remember, that we are being told that there was still "negotiating room", but that Parker balked because of APA's "overreach" in their counter-counter which was in and of itself fairly modest.

I do understand all of those things you wrote. But I have my position on this particular situation because it's not really true "negotiations". That occurred when the MTA was penned. APA had a chance to make that happen then, because it was at that point that various people (including Parker and Kirby) wanted the MTA signed so they could proceed with the merger. This is just the mopping-up phase. They already cleaned APA's clock. HBT and the other issues have value to them, but not enough value to drive them to cave into any of APA's more costly requirements. The only "out" we have is an arbitrated result, and I'm pretty certain the company is willing to live through an arbitrated contract if that's the way we want to go.

A lot of us are willing to live with it to. We still get perhaps 85% of our pay raises in less then a year, section 6 sooner, an excellent chance of slapping Parker's hand away from our work rule till and the opportunity to remain relevant in our next bargaining chance be it 2019 or sooner.

With this TA, we get a quicker and slightly better payoff that will likely cost us more in the long run and a death sentence as a cohesive union and group capable of correcting the present imbalance.

Huey,
If your already happy and satisfied with the job, why the rush to accept more money for QOL and pilot group concessions for a slight bit more? Let it run to arbitration, let the QOL stand with more pay. If those concessions are worth it to MGMT, they will come back to the table even after arbitration.

Huey, the prevailing argument from people wanting to vote yes is that arbitration would yield worse results. However this won't be the case because you won't go to arbitration. If you vote no, the company will come to the BOD and accept the min calendar day proposal. It's the next logical step in the chess match

There's no certainty that would happen. I'm not willing to risk the pay raise for that gamble.

76 is willing to risk destroying his future for a slightly early, slightly better pay raise that will likely be more then offset in other ways as time goes on.

Now THAT is a gamble. :cool:

You are asking Tex to think too much.

Slightly better? $25k this year alone is slight?

Even if we went with the MOU rate, and gave up the pay for this year, the proposed company rate would still be worth around $10k a year more than the MOU rate in 2016.

Sorry, but the miniscule items that the company wants is worth the pay to me.

Has anyone talked to their union reps regarding the possible effects of the 2018 Cadillac Healthcare plan review?

What does this provision allow the company to do? Can they act unilaterally?

This issue alone could all but nullify the shiny pay raises.

Destroying future? I think thats just a little bit dramatic...

I am in the NO column right now (if I was able to vote) based on some QOL items, but if it passes, it certainly doesn't destroy my future.

I don't know why APA didn't slide the Delta contract across the table from the very beginning, but I expect nothing less when section 6 negotiations start.