Telling your wife you will "baby sit" your kids will also draw a long lecture. I guess a Dad cannot baby sit his kids....:rolleyes:

Nah, FTB's no rock star. He's a weight lighting star!

http://static.awkwardfamilyphotos.co...2214881220.jpg


or, in reality,

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XU9x8G7khv...ter_repair.jpg

I once heard from a friend that she didn't like it when her husband said that. I laughed so hard.

Now I use it all of the time.

I agree - the 30 day summer issue is huge.

This is an oversimplification but should explain the issue. Basically those are the two most demanding months as far as manning is concerned. By reducing those months to only 30 days from 31 you are basically "gaining" about a 3% increase in capability from the Pilot group. The fact that the flying is shifted to other less demanding months is why this helps the company - those months are not limited.

In my opinion this can be a much bigger factor than the Reserve ALV+15 issue simply because it affects 100% of DAL Pilots while the Reserve ALV issue will only affect a small portion of the Reserve Pilots - who are themselves only a portion of all DAL Pilots.

Scoop

I heard management at Breckenridge wasn't happy about how little the slopes were being used in the summer.

Maybe it's just me but with the company clearly profitable and consolidation ensuring it stays that way....the days of giving more productivity and horse trading work rules for pay should end. My fear is that those who run our union don't agree with this premise. In a job where you spend so many days away from home...to heap more...working more and more and being gone more as well as further stagnating upward movement is not the right way. Maximizing time with family and time at home while receiving healthy compensation...that is where we should be headed. The union folks always like to talk about "the new reality" and that we are at the mercy of our competition's work rules. I see a paradigm shift, if acted upon through leadership, where Delta pilots could make flying airplanes a career again with the company still raking in healthy profits.

The easy way out is to show guys that they can make more money by working more. A majority of DAL pilots voted for exactly that. And that's what we've all got now. The final step by management is making sure that everybody works as much as possible. That can be done in two ways- by making staffing adjustments which make dropping or swapping impossible, and then by increasing the ALV's to the point where you have no choice but to fly the whole line every month, month in and month out, for the rest of your career. By keeping pay increases below the cost of living adjustments, and by increasing health care expenses, the average line pilot now feels more pressure than ever to just suck it up and work more. Until we have a real sea change at the top of ALPA, this downward cycle in our careers will just persist. It's too easy to buy off on a small raise, a veiled and so far false promise of growth. Not enough pilots are willing to step up and hold our reps feet to the fire and demand more. You say there isn't enough money? You say that now we have to give the FA's raises? I want FedEx PLUS in 2015. If my reps say that isn't possible, then I'm going to be signing a card with a union who believes it is and is at least willing to go to bat for it.

I would like to have been privy to how this went during negotiations. Don't think it's a leap to think how it could have gone.

Company Lawyers: Oh, and we want to make a small change to the bid months, you know, just move a day out of July and August. Not a big deal, I'm sure you'll agree.

Highly Trained Negotiating Pilots: Won't that result in even less need for hiring to replace the guys we're giving the early retirement packages to?

Company Lawyers: No, not really; here, look at these glossy hand outs we made about time-value of money for you to share. It's a win-win. And you really don't want me to mention how we've got plan B lined up, do you?

Highly Trained Negotiating Pilots: Well, if you're sure.

nevermind... :D

It was over 5 years ago that our pensions were bought out for pennies on the dollar and we took over a 40% pay cut, but just recently we lost a third of our profit sharing and gave work rule concessions, to make the most recent TA "mostly" cost neutral. Were these the continuous pay raises you speak of?