sailingfun

Sub par results that have given us the best overall contract in the industry and massive gains in virtually every area of the contract since the bankruptcy. The way you achieve those kinds of results are by getting good contracts done on time. The more contracts you squeeze into a given time frame the better the results. Getting contracts done frequently also forces the rest of the industry up keeping overall costs in line with other airlines. That is a key metric to both management and the NMB. Had we kept our contract demands in a reasonable range think about where we would be at the moment. Looking at past contracts a 3 year on time deal probably would have been easily obtainable prior to covid had we kept our opener in the 1.5 billion range. A contract with a 8,3,3 raises, a 2% bump in the DC funding and modest work changes would put us in a vastly better position than we now find ourselves in. It would put our overall compensation today almost 14% above what we have at the moment and close to 17% when we exchanged openers on the next contract. Openers we would have been exchanging 11 months from now! Instead we will basically be starting from scratch 6 months from now and our peers in the industry have also made no gains. If you think there is a prayer of making that kind of loss up in the coming negotiations your smoking some extremely good stuff!

Planetrain

But we would have given up Narita dry cleaning!!!

Scoop

I generally agree with this philosophy but a few things need to be highlighted:

Sub par results that have given us the best overall contract in the industry and massive gains in virtually every area of the contract since the bankruptcy.

This is true but can the bar possibly have been set any lower? Where else are we going to go after the nadir of BK?

Getting contracts done frequently also forces the rest of the industry up keeping overall costs in line with other airlines.


UAL and AAL opened prior to us - why do you always put the onus on us to raise the bar? How about UAL and AAL trade their work rules for pay and we just bump up to their rates plus 1%.

I agree with you 100% that just holding our breath and presenting the company with unrealistic wants is a very poor strategy but the other extreme gives us TA-1 which was a true turd that deservedly went down in flames.

Scoop

sailingfun

TA 1 was a substantial overall improvement in our contract. Given what you mentioned about coming from chapter 11 it clearly was not enough and was rightly voted down. Keep in mind however that TA1 laid the groundwork for TA2 and pushed UAL management to add almost half a billion to their table position. That proved critical for us on TA2. Here is what their CEO stated.
“The new Delta TA raises the market pay for commercial airline pilots, and effectively sets a new competitive standard for pilot pay. We will be responsive to the impact of the new Delta TA in our negotiations and will adjust our current contract proposal to be competitive with the Delta TA. Our proposal will include significant pay rate increases that are competitive with the new Delta TA.”

Keep in mind that UAL had been under the NMB at that point since 2012. They quickly closed out their contract and our TA2 followed shortly after. The NMB has maintained as their standard of reasonableness in negotiations a contracts standing amongst its peers. That is why frequent contracts with smaller gains produces a far better result than holding out for the moon.

You are correct that we have dragged UAL and AMR up with us but to state we gave work rule concessions and they did not is untrue. There have been changes in the companies favor but overall our work rules are a tremendous improvement over 13 years. Our overall productivity or when discussing it from our point of view reduced productivity is on par with 2001. That’s the best measure of work rules. If we went back to 2007 rules the company could furlough almost 2000 pilots. Post Chapter 11 the company generated 52 block hours per pilot. We have been around a average of 42 hours per pilot under the current contract not counting 2020 for obvious reasons.

Bucking Bar

The trend has been a "signing bonus" rather than retro pay.

I lost a few tens of thousands when my former airline got a new contract just after I walked out the door.

That being stated, could be. I have no idea what the Delta pilots prefer.

theUpsideDown

I've often worried about asking too much in a negotiation setting. Seeing this done a few times, I'm not and I'm surprised at Sailings reluctance. The company was looking for revenue nuetral, and thats as offputting to the NMB as asking for the moon. The nmb told the company to get real. We spent 6months doing a kabooki dance but clearly some pilots feel thats all the unions fault. Im afraid not. The company is going to sacrifice some of its profits to pay the pilots more. The company wants to sell out our scope, thats worth about 3 billion to me, obviously theres some disagreement. Company wants COLA and to pat us on the head once? Fine, give us all the regional flying back and 50-50% on the ****ing widebodies. Theres your damn COLA.

Time to get real here.

CBreezy

I agree. I just don't want to hear everyone complaining when we are doing LAN turns out of DTW and ending up in GRR in February.

boog123

part of this I agree with. The best your experts could come up with prior to what everyone knew was going to be record times was 2012/2015. A bobbled dribbler to first base.

boog123

part of this I agree with. The best your boys could come up with prior to what everyone knew was going to be record times was 2012/2015. A bobbled dribbler to first base.

Schwanker

We gave up a portion of our profit sharing to pay for that dribbler.