February YoY inflation numbers should be interesting -- I think they come out on the 10th. If inflation matches, or is greater than, January's 7%, then bust out your calculators; we'll need them to see if any of our "raises" are in inflation-adjusted numbers.

A5S

 

I get it. Some guys want and need the pickups, but the contract is a big deal for many others. Have management keep telling us how great it is, and lets see who is around in the summer. Personally, after the last email i read, i was convinced that i must be so well off im gonna enjoy this summer by not listening to guys complain how busy they are with greenslips. They dont need help, and i dont need a pay raise apparently.

Apathy.

 

the longer it goes, the more hungry people will be for greens. People will absolutely “be around in the summer.” Like they always are. The fantasy that thousands of pilots will suddenly decide not to take double pay is just that

 

And with the 200 theyre hiring a month, they wouldnt need us anyhow. Do whatever you want man. Everyone will decide what's best for them.

The company is probably right, a new contract isnt important to the pilots here. At my old company, a new contract was important. I dont think its impossible pilots will care more someday here, but either way everything is fine, company has this under control and theres plenty of pilots that want to help the company through the tough times. Theyll be on any moment to remind us.

 

of course, we all do. I don’t green slip much, maybe one or two a year.
A new contract is important to most/all of the pilots I fly with. However, thinking that suddenly thousands of people are going to stop jumping on double pay (as you stated repeatedly) is ridiculous, even if they want a contract.

i want a new contract, but I also think that we won’t get some insane home run deal, no matter what we do. And thinking we will get 3+ years of retro is getting more laughable by the day

 

Exactly. The Greenslip program for most pilots is an excellent incentive. Double pay to come in on your day off. Heck I still remember picking up VLD turns as a RJ FO for $150 gross to help pay the bills. Now one Greenslip pays for a 5 star hotel. House renovation. Etc etc

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

 

i said neither thisNor that.

You are still able to keep straight who you are flippantly replying to today arent you? Its late, perhaps you need a nap.

 

To the post about the NMB releasing into self help:
I know a few carriers have been released/locked out, but by in large it is a tall mountain to climb. I worked for Pinnacle. We went 7 years past our amendable date with a far below average contract. We took a strike vote 86% turned out to vote greater than 99% in favor of striking. Some here might still have their “99%” bag tags. At that time we had approximately 1200 pilots and flew mostly for NorthWest our small Delta network might have just started. We were deemed too important to allow into self help.
A few years after that strike vote and 1 failed TA, Pinnacle purchased Mesaba from Delta following the NWA merger. The company wanting to combine the air carrier certificates was the leverage to finally realize a contract.

There are many pilots at Delta that came from Pinnacle and through that prolonged negotiation. Most of us have a fairly cynical/pragmatic view of the process. I hope that this negotiation will go more smoothly, but I think we need more leverage than we have to achieve a contract that would pass a vote.

 

I would add, pinnacle was parked from negotiations, pre-mesaba merger, because the "no" voting reps sabotaged their own TA in writing and in person. The NMB felt that was dirty pool, and punished the entire group.

The contract after the merger was the mesaba contract extended to the other two carriers and we negotiated a little better deadhead for ourself. Pinnacle reps were brought up to speed on our contract, and while unhappy, they knew they were either going to take our industry leading pay or watch us force our contract onto Colgan.

Cue the "but the health insurance" in 5...4...3...2..

 

Key words, on time.

The planes and various employee contracts were paid for in pre-pandemic dollars while forward revenue will come in the form of a devalued currency and significant inflation. Profit sharing will be solid; however, we should be focusing on buying power. Contract 2022/23 needs to solve for buying power, a huge hit to QOL on the domestic side and for its potential duration.

My take aways:

We never had C19, we need to keep that in focus.

We are now discussing C23 and inflation has changed significantly since then.

At the conclusion of C23, the company will not close the next contract on time.

Abandoning retro pay just entices the company to sign shorter contracts that they have no intention of renegotiating. This effectively cuts the pay raise in half.

Our contract pays in fixed dollars, there will be significant erosion of those dollars going forward.

C23 with retro, may possibly represent nearly a decade or a half to one third of most pilot's careers.

Additional thoughts:

C16 was sold as a huge pay increase, in a vacuum it was. However, the change to the assignment of open time allowed for the optimizer and I think we can all agree the company extracted at least 5% productivity from that nugget alone. C16 was extended to C23, again cutting those gains in half. C16, at 38%, offered only 5% per year raises when duration is taken into account. That 5% a year raise doesn't take into account 12+ year pilots bypassing NB-A for WB-B, another 18% pay cut, to avoid the optimizer and enjoy the QOL they once had. Even if C23 offered a 40% raise, it would represent raises from 2019 to potentially 2030, 4% a year.