ALPA 1941 assistance
 

Long time lurker 1st thread started... Be gentle and use some lube in your responses :)

This probably could have gone in the other 1941 thread. I did see it mentioned in there several pages ago, by Sailing I think. The idea seemed novel and it wasn’t discussed at all.

Before I go into detail on this idea, let me explain my thought process. I think the likelihood of furloughs being prevented by any of the possible means is very low. I also don’t fully trust the company to abide by any no furlough agreement, and I really don’t want to concede items in the contract that will take years/decades to recover.
I also want to help out our soon to be unemployed ALPA brothers/sisters. So the goal for me is to mitigate the suffering of the furloughed while not conceding anything to the company.
My solution is to have ALPA increase dues by 5% on all Delta pilots that have NOT been displaced from A to B. To me those pilots have less financial wiggle room than the rest of us. This extra 5% would then be distributed to the furloughed 1941. My initial thought is to have ALPA hire the 1941 as independent contractors.
Cocktail napkin math says about 8,000 pilots would be on the hook for this extra contribution. Average annual salary for that group I estimated at 200-215k. That generated a benefit for the 1931 furloughed of 40-45k per year. Obviously not as good as them keeping their job, but way better than nothing at all. And likely saving many marriages, bankruptcies, ect...
The extra dues would have a termination point sometime in the future. A year seems appropriate. At that time we would need a MERAT to continue the program.
The extra dues would immediately terminate if there were concessions in any part of the contract.
My favorite parts to this plan are
1) it solves attempting to regain losses in our contract.
2) it shows other employee groups the benefit of being in a union. Imagine a ramper hearing that the furloughed pilot is making +40k from ALPA
3) it helps take away some of the stigma with working GS while there are furloughs since 5% of that GS is going to a furloughed. (I know touchy subject about GS.)
4) it is almost instantaneously cancelable since we are negotiating with only ourselves.
5) it’s a much smaller pay give than the company floated 15% ALV reduction.

I’m looking for constructive feedback if the idea has merit or if there are some hurdles of which I am unaware.

For transparency I’m 1 of the rescued 617

All great ideas. I would much rather do this to help the furloughs than a 15% ALV cut to help a company that is not doing everything it can to help itself and will furlough regardless.

I can abide with the rest, but the bolded part is why I like your idea the most. This is as much an information war as it is a contract one.

Great job getting outside the box.

I’d personally want to pay back this money back over the course of some years upon my return to the payroll.

This is a win/win for the reasons listed.


I’d also keep the Miata!

I just have a problem with your A to B comment. There are just too many variables to not make it an across the board cut. To me a 73A to 330B has more wiggle room than say 7ERB to 220B. But, each situation is different.

I went back and forth on this idea too. It’s very nuanced and every situation is different. I’d be ok with an across the board cut too for the very reason you state. I can’t determine who took the bigger pay cut WB B to NB B or NB A to WB B.

Your idea has merit but I think it should apply to everyone. No carve out. Convince me otherwise.

Denny

As a soon-to-be-on-the-street guy, the fact that folks would even remotely entertain this is humbling.

Honestly, I don’t know how I’d feel about being given 40-45k a year.

Don’t get me wrong, it would be great reassurance for me and the family...but I don’t know how I could accept it without feeling an enormous amount of guilt (as silly as that may sound, not sure if that’s the word I’m looking for)

Interesting idea. One way to frame this would be to come up with a number, say $40K, that seems like an agreeable amount to help get furloughees through one year. Then figure out the % that would need to be deducted from the active guys’ paychecks to meet that. It might be, say, 4.2%. Then vote on that (basically this would make everything precise—it would define the benefit and hopefully drive a number even lower than 5%).

Even more likely to pass would be to basically just put out to everyone: “if all active pilots deducted 5%, furloughed pilots would receive $xxxx per month, so please consider a 5% deduction”, then make it voluntary and hope the majority of guys would opt in. I’m new in the airline biz and maybe it’s laughable to think many guys would do this voluntarily, just throwing ideas out there.

{ full disclosure, I’m in the 1941}

Good point. I agree that it would be weird to be “paid” $40K from fellow pilots.

I’m a bit older and not in a bad spot if furloughed, but when I posted earlier about this being an interesting idea, I was thinking of the 29-year old new hire that just had a kid and has only flown airplanes for his adult life (minimal job prospects). This crisis is not a normal black swan; there’s never been revenue loss and uncertainty like this. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to at least discuss helping the very junior guys out more than a “normal” furlough situation.