Originally Posted by dalad (Post 2910920)

He also is the one who taxiied into the baggage cart entering the ramp in ATL.

Originally Posted by fishforfun (Post 2910946)

“What are you willing to give for that?” That’s what I hear every time I bring up an improvement to the PWA.

I envy the position the negotiators on the other side. To know that the very group you are working against leads with “what are you going to give up for that” puts them in a very powerful position that we cannot overcome easily.

Save concessions for consolatory times. They will come eventually.

Originally Posted by Hank Kingsley (Post 2910916)

Our uniform pants make nice black cutoff shorts.

Originally Posted by ChecklistMonkey (Post 2910978)

I don't think we have to give anything up. On the other hand, as this is a negotiation, we have to prioritize which things we want to emphasize and requests we want to "give up." We won't necessarily go backwards but be willing to accept areas of the contract that aren't as improved as others.

Originally Posted by Scoop (Post 2909106)

Guys,

Since we are in section 6 negotiations, I wanted to start a thread discussing some of the issues that come up every section 6.

What are you willing to give up for that? Nothing. The company had no problem reducing costs quickly and at huge levels when it behooved them. BK is long gone and we should bargain for and expect our costs to increase. The company will put out the usual memo about keeping costs increases down - that is their job. Our job is to increase our compensation.

Think pattern bargaining. Hopefully UAL will set the stage. This does not mean that every part of our PWA will lead the industry - it certainly will not, but with our current level of profitability we should be in the top tier in most sections and should not lag in any. Vacation and DH quickly come to mind. I am sure that there are others.

PS should not be touched. If anyone says we should trade PS for pay-rates or anything else, please enlighten them to the numerous reasons that this this is a fools errand. Due to pattern bargaining pay rates will normalize. Trading PS for payrates is just giving away PS over time.

Speaking of payrates I hear plenty of folks lament our rates as industry standard. That’s fine but when we set them they were industry leading. UAL and AMR matched us so we could have gotten 10% more and it would still be industry standard if other airlines match us.

Plenty of folks will claim an automatic “No” vote ready to go for certain issues. While I have no problem with that since many of the 14K Pilots will have different priorities I prefer to look at the contract as a whole. Make no mistake the value of our PWA will go up, costs for DAL will go up - other than the airline industry this is called a raise. We are due for a raise.

If I could stress one point it would be that every PWA gain does not have to be “paid” for by other PWA concessions. Yes, this is a negotiation so we will have to negotiate, and the company will have their wants but in total we should be aiming for big overall gains.

Scoop

Originally Posted by dalad (Post 2910920)

He also is the one who taxiied into the baggage cart entering the ramp in ATL.

Originally Posted by Ed Harley (Post 2911100)

What are we going to give up? One thing that doesn’t get talked about is growth. A lot of pilots I fly with talk about getting quality of life gains in this new contract that allow them to make more money while being home more. That’s fine, but if the company agrees to these QOL contractual improvements it will most certainly require having more pilots on the property to run the current schedule. As we all know Delta has recently made it clear that they want to aggressively grow our international footprint with Delta WB metal (that’s just been purchased / negotiated) which will require an increase in pilot hiring. We all know that there are limitations to how many pilots Delta can hire and train in a given year.

So what are we going to give up? It may have to be some of that international growth in order for us to gain some QOL improvements.

Originally Posted by Ed Harley (Post 2911100)

So what are we going to give up? It may have to be some of that international growth in order for us to gain some QOL improvements.

Originally Posted by Cogf16 (Post 2911194)

Just spitballin here but I can think of a couple things we could "give" them.
-Increase ALV an hour or 2 (Didn't I read Delta pilots average 80 hrs a month)
-Training freeze Not sure what it is but maybe moderate increases would be minimal impact
-Pay banding massive training savings I would think