notEnuf

Call it what you like but the financial responsibility for auditing payroll needs to be with the company. ALPA needs to bill the company for services rendered for every correction then. The amount should be no less than the cumulative costs for the scheduling committee’s expenses for staff, materials and services. (including ACE) The company is ripping us off twice. Once for pay and a second time for increased costs to the union.

170Till5

hear! hear!

Planetrain

I used to work at an airline that would routinely mess up pay. Our contract was 200 pages and easy to understand so every pilot was an expert auditor. Not much slipped by and we didn’t need ACE.

Our contract here is 571 pages of 8pt font and the SRH is another 266 pages. With great complexity comes great fairness and wealth... Things we didn’t have at the last place. The problem is no one can be an expert on it, including the company; it’s super complicated. We wouldn’t need ACE or the scheduling team if the average pilot could explain things like PB days, trip rigs, MCD, ADG, and reroute. I’m glad we have those things, but to master those contract sections (which changes every 6-9 years) takes years and years of study.

I’m not apologizing for the company- I agree we need to be paid right the first time. Glad things are moving in a better direction.

FangsF15

Can’t disagree with that.

The ideal might be exactly this. We maintain the control, but the company pays the bill. If the company had control, I’m certain there would a a lot more mistakes in their favor…

StoneQOLdCrazy

100%, giving them the lead would be like the fox guarding the henhouse.
But slapping a bill on the company's desk and telling them to cut a check to reimburse the pilots for fixing their incomopetence is not going to happen minus another hats off campaign. (although I think we need to go with ties off next)

They appear to think their crew 360 project that will solve the pay problem, years from now, is enough. Probably most of the MEC is fine with that, as long as Gumm keeps shining them on.

Viper25

Does anybody here seriously think that Flt Ops will fix our pay issues at all, let alone in the next year? No chance.

LeineLodge

What is ACE providing currently besides an app UI to accept reports and a queue’d ticketing system?

How is it $1.3M better specifically than any other off the shelf ticketing system?

I keep hearing about all this automation it has but then others say that part isn’t turned on. Why don’t we* start paying the big bucks when it starts providing the big value?





*no argument that Delta should be footing the bill for this nonsense

FangsF15

Off the shelf does. not. exist. Do you think a Fortune 500 company just gives access to proprietary data to anyone? Do you think they give give server access to just anyone? Then, once you get accecss to that data, what are you supposed to do to protect it? Accredations in the IT world don't come cheap.

It's not that ACE is especially unique, per se. However, ACE is uniquely tailored to the pilots vs towards the company or even ALPA. But there’s way more behind the scenes that creates value. The combination of increased awareness by the pilots (resulting in a mountain of reports vs before ACE, which enabled reporting of a mountain of violations), plus desktop software used by the union to process that information (which previously took 10x+ the amount of time per violation), is part of the value. Plus, due to company data access in the new contract (influenced by 5S, OBTW), lots of the reporting can soon be automated. Auto-ID has been part of the vision from the start (and could have been turned on over a year ago if the MEC admin was doing its job) 5S turned it "on" on their way out on their own. ACE stands for Automated Contract Enforcement. All that comes at a legitimate cost.

If y'all want to go back to not knowing what's going on, and reporting potential violations via email, plus the ALPA being unable to efficiently process potential violations (i.e. go back to only recovering ~$3M/yr vs ~$20+M/yr), then ACE isn’t worth it. Or worse, get something that really IS a glorified spreadsheet, programmed by a dude in India... I submit the money ALPA has invested is worth every penny. ACE has literally changed company behavior.

Again, I'm all for the company having to foot the bill to ensure they follow their own contract. (But I again submit we do not want the company controlling ACE, we want ALPA controlling it). Put it on the list of 'asks' for C26.

Gunfighter

This thread is entertaining. We have Delta pilots who complain about the company using outdated technology, then complain the union spends money on updated technology.

The phrase "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?" comes to mind.

Viper25

“Soon” LOL. What are you smoking? I want some.