Han Solo

You don't know if the pilots you saw were union members or not. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say they were, I still say so what? There are roughly 14k pilots at Delta, and you're telling me a dozen pilots in uniform and holding signs convinced how many thousands of FAs to vote against unionizing? Your argument is not logical in any way, shape or form. Quit blaming others for YOUR problem, it won't lead to a solution and only creates division between labor groups that should be working together. Not taking responsibility for your own action or lack thereof is far more egregious than a few pilots picketing against your union drive.

sailingfun

Are those unions at Delta? Do you have the pictures so we can determine if these were even union pilots?

gloopy

I don't expect you to know everything about our compensation, its history and the effects of BK and other things on it. But to say "only our earnings went down" is completely incorrect. Work rules were severely hit as well, including things that significantly effect staffing.

gloopy

So you can cherry pick some years and focus only on salaries. The pilot's pension dump was pretty significant, plus the work rule hits (including staffing) that you completely glossed over as if they didn't happen.

Not only that, but what exactly is your basis to assume one vastly different work group should, by some virtue of fairness or whatever, always be in lock step with all others?

gloopy

The company's decision to operate every single fleet ever made, coupled with split second marketing decisions to spread each fleet out razor thin to every station and base, have protected a TON of pilot staffing and jobs between the massive training bubble and the manning inefficiencies of staffing the bases in that kind of model. Far in excess of what is simply contractually required to fly the given amount of lift in a far more simplified fleet.

Post merger DL has way more bases and planes that are available to everyone and that results (luckily for the pilots) in significant bodies required. FA's only have the base reserve component of that as a staffing positive as none of the rest matters beyond a very slight initial additional training footprint.

But again, what's your point in all this? The pilot comparisons you keep making are simply not relevant. At all. I know you want a union and that's not my concern either way. They real (and only) valid comparison(s) you should be making are cross sectional comparisons between UAL/AA/SWA/etc. When you do that, you may or may not have a valid point along the lines you are trying to articulate now. I honestly don't know how DL FA's compare to their counterparts now or through the 2000 (or any other year) comparisons you could make, nor do I know what if any moral mandate that could represent in your broader argument for unionization.

But I do know that your comparisons to pilots is irrelevant beyond the PS and Scope you were given as a result.

gloopy

I'm not a fan of "me too!" Bolshevism to any extent. However since its used as a stick against us and to constantly threaten us, I think we should at least pile on and use it to make a point.

BobZ

the pilot pension termination, in particular the unqualed component that would report as annual operating expense, probably swings every years p/l since termination by a billion or more.

and once deep into the dz retirement demographic, maybe 2x that number.

so all employees via wage and ps continue to benefit each and every year from the sacrifices of the retired and active delta pilots.

you are welcome.

now. where is our 14.5% pay raise?

DALFA

My point is that it's a fallacy for a pilot to throw in the fact of other employee groups that they took bigger cuts then they did. That's the argument. If you look at the totality of the cuts you'll find that at least as far as in-flight goes...the cuts were pretty even with what the pilots took. Not raw numbers of course because of the difference in earnings, but comparably...yes.

If you take a 40% pay cut, and the next person takes a 20% pay cut and has to work 20% harder...that in essence is the same proportional cut.

DALFA

Define cherry pick.

I used 2000, the year right before 9/11. I then used 2004 because that's when the pilot group had it's highest pre-bk earnings, followed by 2006 because that's when everyone had the lowest earnings due to BK, and then 2016 because it's the last full year with data available. I wouldn't call it cherry picking...

DALFA

Considering that we share workspace with pilots and that for the most part flight attendants consider pilots as superiors...yes, what a pilot might say does hold some weight. If you don't think so then you're either naive, lying to yourself, or defending those actions because you're one of those that believes you have something to gain from in-flight not having union representation. Your pick.