You live in your own little word. Obviously you didn’t take logic in college.

If what you say is true, why oh why oh why did they drop the college degree requirement?

Just use a tiny bit of common sense.

 

If you can get a copy of the contract from 07 compare it to the current contract. You will be blown away by the overall improvements in pay and QAL. (Que the but we were in bankruptcy crowd) That happened in 10 years. I also never said I wanted or want small gains. I have consistently stated I wanted a 1 billion dollar a year contract. That would probably have been the most expensive contract in US airline history. I also stated that now even 3 years overdue will be lucky to get near that number. We could have been at or very near that number in 2019 I believe. The 3 billion opener shut down negotiations virtually from the start. It also painted the MEC into a corner. Even had the company said here is 1 billion, you decide where you want it the MEC could not bring something so far off their opener to the pilots. The company was also very aware of that.

 

Sailing,


Short duration contracts with steady gains would also require management to play along, and there was no indication that management was interested in anything but stalling in 2019. Also, there is a risk in opening negotiations while being overly concerned with appearing “reasonable”: As we saw in 2015, ALPA bent over backwards to be reasonable in negotiations, and the company completely exploited the situation. ALPA started with a “reasonable” ask and was completely demolished in the negotiation, while the company shot for the moon and obtained a TA overwhelmingly in management’s favor. We certainly don’t want to repeat that episode.

 

All True. Limits are unchanged. But the company still gets to use a 25% deduction in the numbers. 9% on the table remains to the taxman. The cutoff doesn’t change, but in total compensation it does matter a massive amount over 14k+ pilots, especially at 2400/yr at year one pay.

 

The incremental gains over several contracts does wonders - Like sailing said, the 2007 contract is a world apart from what we have now. Obviously pay is better, but reserve got so good after C12 and C15v2 I often bid it the majority of the year. A big ask gets shot down all the time, but an incremental improvement year in, year out does add up to big numbers.

The company has a "boss" too - the shareholders and BOD. It's hard for them to go and say, "we want to give them at 25% pay raise tomorrow that covers this 5 year contract,5 % a year" everyone gasps at that. But tell the same people we're getting 4% the first year, 6% the second year and 5% the last year (yes yes, TVM of money and percent of increase but ignore that for this argument) and it's 15% over 3 years.. or 10% for 2 years. The same shareholders and BOD wouldn't complain - because the numbers aren't huge.

Part of it is optics, part is putting the future raise off to another management team.

In the end, I think we overall do better with small, raises every year, with on-time (or close to it) contracts. But like the currently political climate, people want to elect reps that bang their chests and promise large pay raises, but no way of getting them.

 

Because they signed a flow agreement to keep pilots at Endeavour. Lawsuits to follow had they set two different standards for off the street verses flow. The alternative was watching their regional feed collapse.

 

Yes if we compare the current contract to the one the company 1113'd us into it would be much better - that is totally irrelevant as that contract was chock full of BK concessions, as you yourself mention above, that were extracted with a sword hanging over the head of a pusillanimous Pilot group that was so beaten down we agreed to LOA 51 (biggest mistake we ever made IMHO). Now that we all agree comparing anything to the 2007 contract (the industry nadir) is a fools errand, lets go back a little further and make some more valid comparisons which frankly I am surprised you did not mention.

Reserve has markedly improved even when compared to before BK and going back to at least C2000. We used to have two SC windows every day and reserve pretty much sucked. Much better now to the point where a lot of senior guys bid reserve. Our vacation value blows but our vacation flexibility with IVDs and vacation slide is awesome. I could go on all night but my Woodford is beckoning so lets just agree some stuff is better, some stuff is worse, but either way I agree with the previous poster who said the company will drag out every contract negotiation as long as possible - especially if the industry norm is to accept six months of retro for contracts over 3 years delayed. If some group sets this standard that would be worse than LOA 51.

Just my 2 cents.

Scoop

 

Any TA that doesn’t keep up with inflation (~30% day 1) and include retro sets a dangerous precedent. I’m an willing to strike since we are probably 60% of the way there now and we need to keep this cat in the bag. Our future is under attack. #hatsoff to a new contract!

 

Can someone explain to me why we keep entertaining various percentage increases on date of signing and following years? Instead of all that hullabaloo, why not just say every Jan 1, increase current rates by inflation rate, effective from the amendable date to indefinite time. That cuts out all the guessing and protects the rates, doesn't allow the company to gain from dragging out negotiations either past or future, doesn't (or shouldn't) scare stockholders because we're just maintaining our pay over time. We can all argue about the extras on this, like which inflation marker to use, pull-up clauses, or if you want to add an inflation+. But if we just get the inflation marker into indefinite time, can we not agree that that's a good starting point that cuts out most of the fluff that we're constantly complaining about?

 

I see four options:

Maintain status quo

Accept a contract that's less than inflation, an easy sell to the BOD.

Strike

Illegal work actions

The no hat is just something to keep the troops distracted, also a good assessment of how well a strike vote will actually go.