How 'bout we should have studied and debated the plan before it was implemented? I don't know a single person who doesn't believe in health care reform. I also don't know a single person who understands the implications of the bill. What I'm seeing, and I guess you will soon, is that our med coverage services will decrease and our out of pocket costs will increase. For mil retirees, it's already happening.

It's all an academic point anyway since our union has now done it and never even thought of putting it out for MEMRAT.

I think we keep talking past each other with your question of leverage. Leverage is something you use to get somebody to do something they don't want to do. We pilots weren't the ones that wanted something. We already had it (emphasis on had). It was management that needed us to do something. Thus it was their place to use leverage to try and make us voluntarily get rid of our protective language. The leverage they used is what always works with Delta pilots...fear of the unknown.

Again, we didn't need to use any leverage because we had the language on our side thanks to some very good negotiators years back. We just needed to smile and respectfully say that a contract is a contract. But we didn't do that. Just like the AirTran pilots who were too scared to press their legal rights to an SLI under McCaskill-Bond, we discarded our own language for the same fearful reasons.

Why would I even want to guarantee that tsquare? I'm a pilot, they're managers. The language was there to protect Delta pilots' jobs...not Delta profits. But it's gone now.

Again, I don't know and I don't care. The language was there to protect us, not provide traffic.

Carl

Buzz,

The concept had been around for 20 years. Even though it's not the exact same thing, it was essentially tested in a state called Massachusetts. And when the time came to debate in the summer of 2009, one side said don't change a thing. Even in the face of both candidates and party's admitting that escalating health care costs were threatening to sink the economy, just 9 months before.

One guy's plan would most certainly have led to the end of employer provided health insurance (IMO, he wouldn't have passed it.) and the other guy used a plan that a conservative think tanks came up with 20 years prior.

What you are seeing would have happened either way and with the same amount of speed.

But, with the company making record profits, why should our services decrease and out of pocket expenses increase?

I am just going from memory but I believe that this is totally legal per the contract. They can convert you to shortcall at anytime as long as they give you the minimum notice. The minimum time to report can never be less than 12 hours since you are on long call, so technically scheduling only needs to give you 10 hours notice prior to starting a short call. 10 hour notice plus the two hour report time equals your 12 hour long call.

Think of it this way, while on long call they can assign you a trip for a report in 12 hours, so they can also assign you a SC to start in 10 hours which also results in a 12 hour report.

Scoop

I was just walking by the Special MEC Meeting room and I heard this music coming through the door...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHtiCVA5d8

What does it mean Basil?

February, 2017.

That is the date the ACA must start being fully funded by the American public. Until then it is being subsidized by borrowing/printing money, adding I don't know how many zeroes to the debt. So, for the next three years we will be seeing benefits without too much of a hit to our individual wallets.

February, 2017. One month after someone leaves office. What a coincidence. That is when we will see the effects of full implementation.

Since we're throwing politics into this, I was driving my daughter to school this morning, and we were listening to the news, about the senator speaking all night against the Affordable HealthCare Law. Actually, I didn't think she was paying much attention, when she says "This guy is speaking against the Affordable HealthCare Law? What a d!ck!".

Smart kid, and probably the one time a teenage girl can get her father to be proud of her use of that word.

The 321's aren't being acquired to fly JFK-west coast unless the business model changes from now to then. The reason for the smaller first class cabin, 20 seats, is supposedly because the 757's being kept on & getting interior overhauls are also going to smaller first class cabins - 20 seats.

Revisit the question in 25 years when she is paying thru the nose for it.....

You did tell her that it doesn't mean affordable for her, didn't you?