trashhauler

Good luck with that, the union will probably use that money for a new project or maybe to VEBA

FDXLAG

"This sum shall be calculated after the expiration of the wet lease and shall be distributed to pilots in the manner identified by the Association."

I think there would be a fiduciary responsibility issues since the veba fund only supports medicaid eligible retired pilots (and is controlled by same). Does not mean you are wrong though.

Gunter

You do know that ALPA used wet lease penalties to pay half of the upfront cost for the $25K VEBA accounts, right? The other half came from the company. I'm not sure what we gave up for that negotiated benefit.

The fear is they will take monies meant for all and give it to those poor old panhandling pilots again. You know, the guys getting 110 hr months and all the carryover they can stand.

I really feel for those guys. Maybe we can take up a collection for them.

FDXLAG

Not true. The $25K (per age 52 or over etc) was added to the veba account by the company. It was laundered through the veba account and subsequently distributed to the retired pilots or held in an interest bearing account for those waiting (for hell to freeze over) to retire. Read the contract it spells it out.

The wet lease money was seed money for medicaid supplement fund. In that context it was defendable. Not saying I agreed but the medicare supplement is money well spent that all of us have an equal shot of seeing/using. Unlike the $25k plus interest graft for the privledged few.

But seperate from negotiations and just giving money that "shall be distributed to the pilots" to an already established fund, that isnt controlled or benefiting the current pilots, is a different fiduciary animal.

As I said before does not mean it will not happen.

Shaggy1970

At Least you guys aren't furloughing while everybody else is flying your stuff! We have a great company here at UPS!

990Convair

Amen Pipe, Amen.

gcsass

We better see a bunch of really nice Very Expensive Buffet Accessories come Christmas time !!

AerisArmis

What is beyond an insult is that they are parking at spot 6 in ANC!!! Can't they park them over around back by the 777 superstars. It's just not fair to have Faxhunter walk in from spot 8 while these World dudes get rock star parking. We need to address this in the next contract!! Do we have to think of everything??

HireAstarPilots

If you let the camel put its nose under the tent, then you can enjoy its scheize when the whole animal comes inside a few minutes later. My ancestry comes from Lebanon, and my dad taught me that at a young age.

Tuck

I don't think you're correct here. First off I believe we're talking Medicare, not Medicaid. The wet lease money was seed money into VEBA where all of these funds come from.

As far as having any sort of equal shot, the VEBA funds could dry up at any time and current CBA language puts about $2mil into it per year ($500 times about 4000 pilots). Do you have any idea how much money is in the VEBA today or how much as been used by current members? Neither do I and good luck in trying to find out.

That seed money, with few exceptions, will not be used by any crew force members under the age of 55. In a few years when we have 1000+ retirees drawing funds from the VEBA it's going to draw down pretty fast. The fund is managed primarily by retirees (one active pilot on it and 2 retirees with, to my knowledge, zero reports to the membership??) who solely determine their own expenses. So when we have all these guys retired and utilizing VEBA funds, how long do you think the roughly $45 million initial input and $2million annual will last? As I understand it, there's nothing preventing the retirees from using say $8000/yr??

Yeah if you've got a ways to go to retirement don't count on that VEBA - unless of course we negotiate again for more money. It was about $45million + $25,000 x each pilot over age 53 money lost in negotiations that went to a specific age group alone. Hmmm... is that age discrimination?