I got an email from the MEC last night stating that the negotiating commitee had reached a Tentative Agreement with management. Roadshows to follow but there weren't any details included.

About time! Something happening is better than nothing happening!

what ever it is a bogus t/a no pay raise and status quo on all other work rules. yup that's right same pay as 1999! We have just had it to good for to long. come slip and slide at our water park or pay to see our museum.
viva la verde

Good luck with the T/A. I hope there are improvements in it for you guys. If not, there's always the NO vote.

So did you guys go to a 40 year pay scale?

How did you know? Pretty darn close to the actual scale.....so good guess.

5 1/2 years of on again off again negotiations and this is what we get. ZERO pay raise, ZERO increase in Per Diem, ZERO ZERO ZERO. I don't think so. Del can pack it SIDEWAYS. Shut the place down. Strike now or we don't have one hair on our ass.

The TA (according to the only member of the MEC who will speak about it) is a 'status quo' of 1999 pay rates, and a 1991 per diem.

The story being told is the owner of our company (we are privately held) has put all of the assets of the holding company in a foundation, $ that can't be touched. Meanwhile, the airline has been refinanced many times, so future debt payments are a concern. To continue to get refinancing, the banks want to see labor stability (a new contract), and the company can't afford anything more than status quo, because they have no $.

The foundation (and all the $) is going to protect a hanger/office space for ownership, an aviation museum, a space museum, and an IMax theater . . . all built in the past decade. An indoor water park with a 747 perched atop of it is being built now, and a future hotel/conference center is in the works. All of this is located in McMinnville, Oregon.

McMinnville has no access to a major airport (PDX is 49 miles and about 1.5 hours away), is not served by an interstate (I-5 is the closest), is the center of 'Oregon Wine Country' with 14 vineyards (the only other tourist attraction draw), and is a convenient stop only for those traveling between Portland and the central Oregon coast (the northern coast is a quicker drive from Portland, and Eugene, Salem, and California are all served by I-5, which McMinnville is not on). The population of around 32,000 is likely not large enough to support all of the tourism infrastructure that has been built by Evergreen.

We have the lowest hourly pay rates, per diem, and minimum guaranteed pay of any 747 operator in the US. We've been in negotiations for over 5 years.

Some might say the same shrewd man who founded an airline on a wing and a prayer is now yet again bucking conventional wisdom by turning McMinnville into a tourist draw (like Walt Disney did to Orlando), insuring the future viability of the company. Others would say that a profitable airline with a labor cost advantage for the past decade was mortgaged to finance a tourism empire/money pit.

In other words, we're likely no better or worse off than most passenger airlines.