20Fathoms

I hate to start a new thread with all these new ones popping up…..but will anyway

I’m leaning yes on this agreement despite the lackluster pay and retro, and am pretty dang sure it will pass however I vote. That being said I do have some concerns about this new premium open time thing.

1: First off was this a company want or a union want? I don’t remember it being in polling. If this was a company want, why?

2: My main concern is it makes reservists second class citizens by creating the functional equivalent of a “line holder only greenslip”. Perhaps tunes or someone connected can opine, but is there anything stopping the company from doing the following:

A pilot calls out sick for a trip later today. As it stands now, they could always ARCOS for whiteslips but short notice trips for single pay usually have few takers. If no one grabbed it, it would go to the GS ladder and line holders and reservists have equal power to get it based on their seniority. Under the new AIP can the company just designate it a premium trip at 200 percent and send it out in the white slip ladder via ARCOS? This would basically exclude reserves from the GS ladder until the “line holder GS” were exhausted because reserves cannot white slip.

Also if they ran it this way, a line holder could get premium trip #7 or so (subject to WS limits) before a reserve could get GS#1. This would decimate reserve greenslips and by extension, payback days, something we know the company wanted bad but was a third rail issue for many of us including me.

If the definition of a concession is making the status quo worse in some area, this definitely seems like a possible concession to me (I’m biased, I bid reserve). Be interesting to see the actual language.

Banzai

Considering that none of us know what "premium open time" actually means, or the rules surrounding it, I'm withholding all judgement until I see it. Right now all we have is a single bullet statement in an email, and a few comments from those "in the know" on this message board. Everything is pure conjecture right now.

TED74

I think it’s healthy to imagine a world where green slips are not the norm. Many (most?) of us want to get back to an operation that is staffed adequately and green slips are quite rare. The company saw this spring how overextension can really bite us and I actually believe them when they indicate a desire to get back to more historic norms of premium pay.

In the plausible scenario where a category is more properly staffed - this may even be the majority of categories now or soon - reserves simply aren’t used so much. Personally, that’s what I want on reserves. In exchange for more days of obligation, I want to work less and be home more. Any policies we seek that are focused on how our operation deals with green slip #7 are, IMHO, ultimately destructive to the pay and qol for many, while enhancing pay and qol for a few.

crewdawg

What Ted said.

Banzai

How quickly the online pendulum has swung from decrying record-smashing green slip numbers and pilot fatigue to wondering if this contract might prevent one from getting multiple green slips.

No one is ever pleased.

HandFlyorDie

tunes elaborated in one of the existing threads....I think it was the We have an AIP... He said that these trips would be designated in the bid packet when company predicted short staffing (think holiday weekends etc) and that once it was awarded it would be 150% but trips that entered opentime normally throughout the month would fall into the standard opentime bucket. I am probably butchering his explanation but the gist was it wasn't going to undercut GS pay by becoming the go to or part of the coverage ladder throughout the month...more of a month out broad look at staffing to try and get people to fly more. Sick calls, wx anomalies, etc. would still produce GS coverage and any normal trips in opentime that haven't been straight WS/YS will go to GS.

But remember you're listening to guy who read a another guy's post a couple days ago and is interpreting what he recalls...

jaxsurf

No kidding. I personally hope we go back to higher staffing levels and reserves aren’t used every day.

If people model their finances around 3-4 green slips per month, that’s silly, and it’s their own fault.

20Fathoms

With respect, you miss my point. If reserve GS’s go away because the company staffs properly that’s fantastic. If reserve GS’s go away because junior line holders get first crack at premium time before senior reservists then that’s not quite so fantastic and a negative change for me from the status quo.

Keep in mind, payback days are one of the few checks we have on the company running “too hot”. If those go away, by hook or by crook, the whole list can be affected. Still probably a yes, I’m just saying we need more info on this and it could have negative effects.

Banzai

Ok, you're correct. Blanket 150% WS would be toxic AF, but the exceptionally abbreviated skinny seems to be that this won't be the case. I'm waiting for the actual wording.

Part of my reaction I think came from reading a post in another thread where a poster (paraphrasing) was complaining about how useless the new reroute pay was because there's no way to bid for reroutes, and thus it's not a pay increase. At that point I rolled my eyes so hard I think I cracked something, and logged off for a while.

tunes

close.
company can designate rotations worth 150% in the bid package. If they are awarded in PBS, they are at 150%. If they aren't awarded via PBS they go back to 100%. During the month, the company can designate regular open time rotations at 200% that will follow the steps of coverage. The 150% figure is only during PBS, they can't designate regular open time trips at 150%.