JT8D

Oh they’ll whine and point fingers and talk about impending doom and mythical mass migrations to other carriers. But talk is all they do, and for the most part they’re dead fkkin’ wrong…

Swakid8

‘I noticed this..... which left me torn on the issue but after taking sometime to think things over, the award is no surprise and quite few folks I’ve talked to think the same thing. Union did what it could, the company just had a better chess strategy. No concessions were taken which is important. Next important thing is to get this CBA implemented and move forward from there. Time to make lemonade out of lemons.

That means folks will need to decide what they want to do, and is the best for themselves and their families. If it is to stay great, if not, that’s great too. Lemonade out of lemons.

WhipWhitaker

It wasn’t wasted, imagine how many steak dinners and full months of UB they got! Don’t worry, they’ll continue working hard for you.

Elevation

Our strategy was recalcitrance, and only adjustment was to double-down. In the end we wound up in the same place we could have been four years ago. Union did not exercise all paths, use all resources nor spend the resources they did have wisely.

Elevation

EDIT: Looks like we're NOT getting a signing bonus.

desertdweller

Can you confirm that? Saw the LOA from May 15 In the documents.

Crusoe

In this fantasy scenario, you would have had a truly amalgamated CBA between our bottom barrel CBA & the old Southern pos bankruptcy CBA that was in the sub-basement. It would have occurred prior to most of the other large jumps at all the other airlines and well prior to any incentive by the company to give anything other than the smallest of token raises as market forces were still years away from approaching the shores of Purchase. No vote, no strike threat, no incentive on management’s part & no leverage on our side. So you’d currently be standing here with almost nothing to show for it watching everyone else zoom past…only to have them buy another smaller, bottom barrel CBA airline in a year or two & wash rinse repeat. Never even lifting a finger or taking a chance to fight for the opportunity to vote…ever. Brilliant.

HPIC

No signing bonus. No reduction in days worked. No increase in CRT. No gain in scope. Minimal increases in other places. Atlas will now be where careers die.

Prof Chaos

Yes. The document you saw did not have "AGREED" marked on it, because it was never agreed to by management. That LOA document was a Union proposal, and in management's final brief to the arbitrator they said zero retro/signing bonus was warranted based on the fact that it was the Union that delayed the process by forcing it into the court system, plus the company implemented a 10% pay raise last year. That was apparently enough to satisfy the arbitrator to deny granting ANY signing bonus.

This arbitration award was foreseeable pretty much from the start. Union leadership made a serious miscalculation in 2016 by trying to treat this "process" as a Section 6 negotiation, rather than what it actually was: a process to merge the current contracts of the two pilot groups. There is nothing in this award that would not have been achieved 4 years ago. Instead of being (worst case) about 6 months from Section 6 on a new contract (or forcing management to buy yet another ****** ball carrier), the Union delayed the inevitable (with no legal foundation) resulting in 4 years of lost earnings for the pilots in the group.

Our former Union leadership gambled on economic pressures bringing the company to the table to engage in real negotiations. The closest they got was getting management to throw out the old Southern contract and bring it up to par with Atlas' current book. But there was never any realistic chance of that strategy working at Atlas. The sad truth is, even with our pre-JCBA contract, there were enough other aviation jobs out there that were worse places to work, and plenty of folks were willing to come work for Atlas. Growth was slowed, which in some respects can be argued to have hurt pilots much more so than management. Whether their "strategy" stemmed from an honest misunderstanding of the RLA (as well as US labor law) and our Scope clauses (or even incompetent legal advice), or whether it stemmed from a less seemly motivation, I cannot (and will not) say.

Anger is not a strategy. But unfortunately, throughout my entire aviation career that has been the driving strategy of every Union council of which I have been a member. Rather than stoking the frustration and resentment of their membership, Union leadership would be much better served by educating their members as to the reality of the legal framework (which is admittedly extremely biased against pilot labor) that controls their pay and working conditions, then developing a plan that works within that framework (while simultaneously working to make that legal framework more friendly to labor).

I fully support our current (and newly elected) leadership in their efforts to protect and improve our working conditions, but hope that they have the vision to breakout out of the tired, old, and failed strategies of the past. The mistakes of the previous leadership will impact this pilot group for the next decade (or more).

121guy

I can’t believe they have the absolute NERVE to try and delay the pay increase for another month.