jrmyl

Maybe try to tune in to one of the video calls they hold. Or watch the recording on the union site. They mention this almost every time. There are no talks in process, but they feel the company knows they are ready to talk at any time.

Turbine1

According to the Union in their crew calls thru last week, upper management has shown no desire to discuss pay improvements. The current rumor is a move to DOS +3 pay, there’s absolutely no truth to that or any other pay bump according to the 2750 President. As always the Union stands ready 24/7 to engage with Atlas to improve the CBA.

At the official CBA signing I think it was in March, all the company said was they were willing to discuss improvements “that didn’t cost money”. Note mgt still hasn’t implemented the few CBA improvements we got; almost a year after we were awarded them, such as the computer based open time and trip trade system. Costs money.

Classes are full and the company is making billions. Inflation isn’t their problem to deal with.

Swakid8

Word I have gotten recently was that the company hasn’t come back to the table so there is no discussions. I can only speculate that there’s a split on the position of increasing pay amongst the upper management. (Some knows we need to do more vs some that have no desire to do more financially because they believe it will not solve the attrition problem. Throwing good money after bad as they say….)

CRJJ

My guess is the world/economy/hiring will have to get much worse in order to get any improvements.
mas it’s been said, they may not like all this hiring madness and running the training department to the limit, but they keep making an insane amount of money and that’s all it matters to them at the end of the day, numbers.

160to4

I agree with the post about it not going to solve the attrition issues. If management and the union agreed on a DOS+3, it would curb the attrition numbers but won’t make a significant enough change. Cost neutral is what management want, so unless there’s a “we’ll give you this for you giving up that”, I don’t think much is on the cards. However, a big number of our new recruits are from the regionals, and we’ve already seen 2 of them match our Year 1 pay, so I don’t think it’s off the table at all.

The company is making $$$$, and with yesterday’s inflation numbers, it all but confirms an imminent recession. I know where I’d rather be when it does hit

notthesame

It just seems like this whole conversation is very one sided -- the company isn't ready to talk, but we're waiting when they are. But the union has an $8m war chest, and money talks. It could go a long way towards changing attitudes regarding the sponsoring of foreign pilots (I have no problem with foreign pilots, but overseas hiring events and 50% foreign new hire classes? Puhh-leeze) who are undercutting our US labor market (and plugging the attrition gaps). Or getting information to board members. It's alot of money, it should be made to work in our favor rather than decorating a bank statement.

Swakid8

The company knows that if they can get foreign pilots, they will be able to staff their airline because they will not move on the Majors (can’t without sponsorship)

I believe the regional supply will dry up as close the gaps with us…

Turbine1

The Atlas business model is to have the cheapest labor in the industry, by far. Some regionals are now paying what our 12 year 747 Captains made this time last year, before the arbitrator ruled 140 out 150 items for the company. If the status quo remains the regional candidate pool will certainly dry up.

Management is going to exhaust every possible option such as foreign pilots, college recruitment events, and their own 142 school before they pay this pilot group a penny more. It’s the way they’ve operated for the past 30 years and short of a complete change of upper management, the next 30 years. They talk a big game about being a “Destination Airline” but Atlas is anything but for the majority. The CEO admitted in arbitration that’s it’s only a stepping stone airline, and that’s the way he wants it.

Most of the attrition is below the 5 year mark so as we’re on track to lose 600 pilots this year they’ll just keep up the foreign recruitment or invent new ways to hire 600 replacement pilots, until they too depart to airlines that pay industry standard wages and benefits.

notthesame

All very true. But none of that stops us from using the funding at our disposal to at least try to get some movement. I'm not a fan of sit back and wait.

SealingStemBolt

"Its a banana Michael. What could it possibly cost, ten dollars?"

$8M isn't exactly a lot of money for an organization the size of IAP 2750. It's about right considering we just wrapped up a very contentious bitter legal battle with the company but it's not a lot of money.

Besides, what do you think they could do with the $8m to convince Atlas to pay more money? Billboards in front of the airport? Sternly written full page ads in the WSJ? This isn't the passenger world where there's any sort of court of public opinion. Our customers (the only people that matter here) are looking for a combination of price, availability and reliability. If you're concerned about reliability lately it's merely relative to what everyone else can do. Yeah FedEx isn't facing delays due to lack of crews but then again, I doubt most of our customers want to pay for THAT level of reliability anyway. Atlas only needs to be concerned with competing with the other ACMIs and, to a lesser extent, oceanic and rail freight. You can leave freight sitting at the airport for a LONG time before someone thinks they should have loaded it on a container ship. Meanwhile Kalitta, WGS, ATSG and all the rest are in even worse shape than Atlas so we STILL look like the premium outfit for ACMI air freight.

So in the end, I really don't know what $8M or really any amount of money can do to talk Atlas into paying more. Plus I'm sure they're looking at the same economic data as everywhere else and know that their hiring troubles are merely temporary. No need to give big permanent raises when they'll have plenty of applicants in a year.