BlackRocket

The pay disparity between fleets has grown over this contract and will continue to diverge with additional pay increases in the future. The difference between 12 year A350 and A220 is quickly becoming $100 an hour.

With the new talk on increasing international flying and purchasing more widebody aircraft there needs to be some sort of pay banding between the fleets. Possibly a narrow body rate that is tied as a percentage of the widebody rate. This would level the playing field on future aircraft orders and be a win win for all.

Thoughts/Comments...

Baradium

I personally don't like pay banding for the same reason it saves the company money. It discourages movement. It also lowers the seniority discrepancy between fleets. Under a non-banded system there are pilots who will chase pay rates as soon as they can or shortly after. This results in more training events, higher staffing levels, and (more importantly to me) better seniority for pilots on the lower level fleets.

Under a banded system the pilots who previously chased money will just bid to whatever gives them the best relative seniority since pay will be the same, this means that for the other fleets more junior pilots won't hold as good of a schedule as they would have previously. This becomes a QOL hit for junior pilots and in some cases might not be as much of a pay bump (if at all) due to lower schedule opportunities). This is in addition to the lower staffing levels resulting in fewer pilots needed. In some cases this would be the difference between being a banded WB FO and an unbanded WB CA.

deadseal

This is a one item no vote for me. Nice list above

Bert Sampson

UPS is the ultimate example of pay banding. Do they hate it?

Tummy

It isn't a zero sum game. Something can be both good for the company and good for the pilots. Wasting money on training events is bad for both of us. There is an opportunity here to save the company money and also increase pilot compensation.

The difficult part is making sure that the increase in pilot compensation as a result of pay banding is permanent as opposed to something that we will lose in the next contract cycle. I'm not sure how to do that. Maybe we accept pay banding in exchange for increasing the profit sharing rate? Just spit balling.

crewdawg

I'm for it. There is zero reason why our 330/764 guys make less than 777/350 guys (we're the only carrier that doesn't band them), same with 737/320/etc... I'm not for pure LBP, but I'd be for WB/NB or WB/Large NB/Small NB. Lets face it, the company is going to come HARD for productivity given the training bill they'll have to fill over the next decade, and there are was to mitigate some of the job loss. Also, if a senior guy bids "down," a junior guy will be able to bid "up." The less amount of time I spend on Virginia ave., the better. Lets offset some of it by getting rid of DGS instructors.

That's a tough comparison, because most guys there haven't seen another else. They didn't have to deal with trying to offset the productivity give that it is. That said, my UPS buddies love it because they'll likely only ever have to do 2 training events if they want...once has a newhire and once as a Captain.

Baradium

You're missing the part where is means more jobs and you're ignoring the QOL part of it.

Baradium

A junior guy might be able to "bid up" but he won't be bidding to higher pay and will not have the same schedule bidding power. For pilots that want to bid for QOL and not necessarily always top dollar, pay banding is bad.

At FedEx the senior a/c is the A310 flying domestically. I believe UPS is the same with domestic flying the most senior. If you don't want to do long haul, full pay banding is bad. Even if you do, it still causes seniority to be more evenly distributed among all fleets and means that there isn't an opportunity to bid QOL over pay like we have now. Pay banding is a QOL killer for those that don't just bid for pay.

gzsg

I would support pay banding if we offset the job loss with 5:15 per day vacation.

I agree it could be a win/win for us and management.

5:15 would be the absolute minimum.

crewdawg

Ehh...I went from bidding ~35-40% on a NB to ~93% on a WB and increased my Pay AND QOL significantly. I can make in 12 days (mostly only gone 3 days at a time) on a WB what it would take 18-20 days on a NB. Most months I bid a line I can drop my entire schedule and pick up trips on days that I want to actually work. Most months I bid reserve I can get the days off I want. Even if I get coverage days on reserve, ~90% of the time I can move that day to something else. My reserve months I fly 3-9 days. I could never do either of those on my NB...even at ~40%. Almost 100% of the trip are commutable and have a min of a 22 hour layover.

Many WB guys will never bid back to a NB even as a Captain. This is why I think having WB/NB or WB/LNB/SNB are good option and would mitigate your worries. Either way, I doubt we'll change each others mind, and that's ok.