We got almost everything. The company wasn't violating the contract in doing IA free for all in almost all the cases.

We got unlimited premium flying with no trigger that honors seniority.

That’s alot more than nothing

It’s funny watching people split hairs over the lookback when the company can arbitrarily demand verification for any and every sick call under GFB.

IMHO, settling the sick grievance without putting further restraints on GFB was a mistake. “General nature of the illness” needs to be removed from all verification requirements as well.

we did get something.

Meh. I do find it childish, annoying, and invasive, and think it should go away, but I also don’t ever have an issue with honestly answering a GFB call, so that’s fine with me.

Very few GFB calls go out to non probationary pilots. Maybe that will temporarily change, but with telehealth for all, is it really that hard to get a teachers note?

Yes, because we’ve never tried that before.🙄
are you new?

plus a gfb makes the sick call free in terms of look back. they’re a slight hassle, but not really that onerous or invasive.

With QHCP + Telehealth for GFB verification, at company cost, I’m not sure how much the company will love spamming GFB.

The company won’t even blink an eye at having to pay a bunch of $100 telehealth bills. That’s a microscopic fraction of the overall cost of a sick call.

QHCP + Telehealth also lowers the company’s GFB costs. Especially if a pilot’s only convenient option for an MD-signed certificate was an ER visit previously.

Me thinks arbitrarily demanding verification for any and every sick call would run counter to the GF portion of GFB. 😁

does your city not have an urgent care office? who goes to the emergency room for a sick note?

Anyone who wants to maximize the company’s expense for using GFB. Which should be everyone on property.

We’ve seen other verification campaigns before, specifically on MLOA back in 2013-2014. In that case one manager in particular seemed to use MLOA verification as a feather in his “look what I did for the company” hat. A sick leave GFB campaign could be similarly seen by an ambitious manager.

I don’t see the MOU as a “win.” I see it as closing one can of worms and opening a couple of new ones. I really wish this bandaid fix would have been saved for leverage in upcoming contract negotiations.

i guess i don’t see “driving up costs” as a universal benefit to me, nor do i think my petty crusade is worth taking up emergency room space.

if you want to drive up costs, though, why not just stay out longer on your sick call which now doesn’t count for lookback?

This MOU conflates sick and coverage to say we got sick as a "get" for coverage issues is disingenuous. They did this to solve two separate (multiple) grievance issues. They were completely independant until this MOU combined them to show a "gain." The horse is dead but next summer I reserve the right to revive it and say I told you so when phones are blowing up and people are sick of answering the calls for trips they will never hold.

and when they don’t stop awarding green slips, will you also reserve the right to say you were wrong?

It’s management’s decision to incur GFB costs, not ours.

And yes, not calling in well until you are 100% certain that you are 100% well is essential (as with any sick call).

I agree with most of what you wrote. But my point was that we spend a lot of time discussing / negotiating lookback and verification triggers when GFB renders most of it moot.

GFB has been used extensively across the entire pilot group in years past.

Some folks weren't here for past contracts, and may not understand the special place Pilot Sick has in the heart of the company. They HATE it. With a passion. (At least in part, because we have pilots who abuse it. To what degree is beyond the point). IMO, the company over-reacts to that 'abuse', but the point is the company has an absolute burr up their backside over sick.

It was one of their major gatekeeper issues in C15. At the time, we had voluntary verification of sick (but foolishly gave that back in C19 because somehow self-reporting/documenting was too onerous on their admin folks). C15 required a MD note after 160 hours, but also had a provision where the company could always mandate an MD note. We are the only major carrier (I am aware of) who has GFB in their contract, much less an over-30-day medical records disclosure clause. C15 also tightened up the language on mandating a "bonafide relationship", where your spouse/parent/cousin could no longer write your sick note. It also had exclusion from lookback for 'major bone' or a hospital stay, but not a knee replacement. It was silly. I mean, what valid reason can one give to say that a PA or NP couldn't verify your sickness in some instances? How cynical do you have to be to say, "No, you MUST go to an MD!? C19 did slightly expand the threshold for 'lookback' from 100 hours to 120 hours. All that said, we do have a much larger annual allocation than other companies. We have all these little nuance rules and exclusions, all because the company hates sick and wants to create disincentives to using it.

My point is that for the company to transition from disputing whether MiCrew 'worked' for sick reporting, to now agreeing to waive sick verification is a BIG deal. That's like Seinfeld's Soup Nazi suddenly not caring how you ordered the soup. Or, like the pilot group suddenly saying "we'll waive PB days for the next couple of months". That in and of itself tells me we had some serious leverage/proof hanging over them, and giving that up should not be dismissed as a small thing - not because of how it's good for us, but for how important it was to the company.

I'm over it but it would have been nice to have this debate and give input before the MOU... representative governance and all.

There have been times where that has been true. And they have also reportedly scaled way back on GFB because they weren't catching (m)any fish, and it was costing them too much money and verification-excluded hours. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

Maybe they will reevaluate that equation during this period where no verification hours accumulate. Maybe even more so as we near the end of the sick year, and there is virtually no disincentive on a borderline call to not call in sick. But again, it's not that hard to get a legitimate note.

You are assuming they get the 23M7 piece of this right. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt but that means more fishing for seniors and that will drive them right back to skipping and QS. So sure, but now first up on the next ladder step will get the payment. This guarantees no 23M7 gravy for anyone other than the top 3.

Well I mean, what happened is the literal definition of representative governance.

I expect auto accept to filter them to the ones I can actually accept. We negotiated for that and for the batch limits but now we don't have either.

Take notes, Sextagenarians

THIS is how you mentor your broccoli haired juniors

Fair. Bookmark this post, I hope you are right but my opinion is you will be wrong.

Sick leave has been a battle since I’ve been here. When I was hired, we didn’t have verification lookback. You went to 75 percent sick leave pay. Then we got the 100 hours of unverified per sick leave year and you could verify whatever you wanted to. Then we voted down something horrible and settled on the 100 hours unverified in previous 12 months with no option to verify. Turned into 120 hours last contract. My point is it is always a battle.

If you truly believe this then we should have gotten a much better deal.

Honest question, is the note thing really that big of a deal? The one I've had to provide in over a decade was easy enough and only becuase of a GFB call. If that rate keeps up, having to provide 2 or 3 notes in a 3.5 decade career is a small pain to keep an amazing sick benefit. I wasn't a fan of it initially, but I really don't understand the gnashing of teeth over this. The fact that there was a question about switching to an accumulation model is concerning.

I'm missing the meaning...? So am I or am I not the father?

The funny thing is a lot of our sick burn the company does to themselves via UMR.

Tore a tendon. Saw doc that day. "you need surgery, and an MRI first just so I have right parts on hand"

Took a couple weeks before UMR would approve the MRI. It showed exactly what doc thought it would.

Then UMR said we had to try alternative therapy before they'd approve surgery. It's only a realistic option with a 6mm or smaller tear. I had a 14mm tear.

The tear got worse, and tendon detached. UMR finally approved "emergency" surgery as I no longer had use of arm.

Way more involved, expensive surgery. Same 2 week recovery. But I will likely have to do follow up surgeries because the alternative therapy had a risk and that risk (tendon detachment) came to pass.

This would've been under a month and 75ish hours of sick, but turned into 2.5 months and just under 200 hours sick.

Delta via UMR caused 125 hours of sick use that if they had just approved the surgery that wouldn't have been needed.

This and a previous surgery were needed late in a fiscal quarter, and in both cases as soon as a new quarter hit, surgery approved.

Feels like they approve things based on quarterly targets and not medical necessities.

While we're having the historic discussion, is there a reason the sick year resets on the same month for everyone? At surface level it seems kinda dumb that it doesn't reset on an individuals anniversary.

Agreed 100%

So every thing is representative since we have representatives? The root of this is represent. How do they know without discussion or debate what they are representing?

That has come up in the past. Many have suggested your sick year resetting on your individual hire month, like APD does.

I wouldn't be surprised if the company didn't want that because they didn't think they could handle the IT of it...

Did you contact your reps recently to tell them your displeasure with the current IA free-for-all?

Attend an LEC meeting?

Okay, I'll bite. Why do YOU think the company agreed to suddenly flip their position, and suddenly agree to exclude sick verification from July to at least January (6 months) and probably more like March or April (9+ months)?

I just assumed it was so they could hold up the May sick leave spike as a reason to make our sick leave more onerous during contract negotiations. We already have vacation that resets in April and APD/Pay/everything else that resets on your hire month, so I don't see why it would be stretch for our IT to align it with APD/Pay.

Because they needed to tag a win on to the IA coverage solution. Sick has never been a costly issue just an emotional one for the company and the pilots. GFBs aren't catching abusers and abusers aren't a real driver for payroll costs. This has always been about the "feels" and not the outlier fringe. This was an easy give and will cost them nothing. The 99.9999999% honest operators will continue to be reliable and the rest will continue to evade punishment.