Come on, Alan. You're a smart guy. I know this isn't lost on you.

If you're management, and you see quotes from the President of our union (and former Chairman of our MEC, who most certainly has close ties to our current MEC folks) that tout how great things are now and how reasonable we plan to be going forward... you KNOW your expectations are that "labor risk" is pretty much off the table (seems I saw a quote like that somewhere :rolleyes:) and pilot costs are not going to increase significantly. Therefore, you're more likely to believe a lower opening position can result in a lower end result cost increase. That's just common sense and basic human behavior.

Now, I realize you have rationalized his quotes and put a positive spin on it. But surely you can see how those same quotes can be taken the way they sound... the way most of us read them.

Heck, even Moak seems to recognize how it sounds since he's privately claiming to have been misquoted. And then there's the whole issue of my ATL reps, who were very clear in their support of what he said in those quotes. So which is it? Are the quotes okay or not? My reps say yes. You say yes. Moak says no. Quite the conundrum, don't you think? ;)

I think I vaguely remember that. I also think I vaguely remember your post as you referenced above. I didn't respond to it because I thought it was such an obviously ridiculous point that it didn't even need to be countered. Here's why...

As I recall, the rest of the employees didn't take anything like a 32.5% pay cut prior to BK. For them to get back to their "pre-BK" pay would be significant restoration... for them. For us to get back to our "pre-BK" pay is extremely little progress toward restoration. In fact, we're still not even there yet. In terms of buying power, our pay rates are currently at a 34% pay cut. In actual numbers, it's something around a 20% pay cut.

How do the other employees compare? I don't know exactly, and I don't really care.

I'm sorry, but I do not see anything about us planning to be reasonable going forward. And the only truly positive thing he says is how much profit the Company is making.

Absolutely. And it was no surprise to me to read the way that you interpreted them. I was simply giving my read. Agree with it or not.

Whatever. I've heard nothing about Moak's private thoughts or musings on the subject, nor have I engaged my reps on the issue.

And you wonder why we have such a bad reputation among our coworkers. Then again, maybe you don't know or even care. Do you have any clue how arrogant you sound?

Maybe so. I have no idea what sort of pay cut the other employees took after 9/11, not to mention whether they've actually gotten it all back. I just saw Delta's pronouncement as little more than pandering.

Agreed...

Worse, Randy Babbit works for SWA as head of labor relations. He collects a pension from ALPA while collecting a paycheck from SWA to keep labor, including pilot, costs down.

Feel the LUV?

Indeed, vote them all out.

It was a simple mathematical statement of fact. I don't see how you could have possibly taken it the way you did.

I do know how touchy some of the other employees are about how much money we make. Sorry, but I don't make any apologies about that. If they wanted to be pilots, or business executives, or doctors, or whatever else pays more than what they make, then they should have pursued it. I certainly don't flaunt it in their face... and I am extremely respectful and professional with all of them. Beyond that, if some of them have a chip on their shoulder about it, there's nothing I can do about that. I'm certainly not going to voluntarily take less pay to make them feel better. :eek:

What's up with you today, T? I thought you were a conservative and didn't like socialism? ;)

“This is really a good story,” ALPA President Lee Moak said Tuesday during a visit to Bloomberg Businessweek in New York, part of a quick tour to assure Wall Street analysts that ALPA’s contract demands won’t prove onerous to airlines. “I almost can’t stand it, it’s so good.”

Thanks to the profits, pilots now see themselves as collaborators with management—they increasingly lobby alongside airline executives in Washington. That, says Moak, deepens the working relationships. “All of a sudden, you find yourself on the same side of 95 percent of the issues,” he says.

Moak contends that ALPA pilots at the larger carriers enjoy what he calls “mature, good contracts” already. Radical overhauls aren’t in the cards, he says.

“There will be a business discussion of pay as it relates to revenue,” Moak says. “You can argue about $2 or $2.05, and that matters to the crew member,” but “you’re working on the margins” on the new contracts, he says.

Airlines have been mum on what they’ll seek in the contract talks, despite some analyst queries on quarterly earnings calls. “We have a productive and proactive relationship with our pilots and ALPA, focused on winning in the marketplace and addressing our business challenges and opportunities together,” Delta spokeswoman Kate Modolo said in an e-mail.

First, I have great respect for your union leadership at Endeavor. You guys have had to endure an incompetent management group and a restructuring industry that led to a painful bankruptcy. Many union leaders would have gone the populist route and just hurled insults while watching their company disintegrate. You had some guys that made some really hard decisions and continue to make hard decisions.

Back in 2001, even before 9/11, the mainline industry was too fractured, suffering from over capacity and networks that were too small. Coupled with terrorism and rising fuel prices, this led to the downgauging of the airlines and the boom of the regional industry. The answer to an unstable and unsustainable industry was consolidation. Unfortunately, everyone was playing the game of musical chairs, waiting for some other carrier to go out of business and force consolidation as it had occurred since deregulation, like Braniff, Eastern, etc. which were just consolidations where the employees all lost their jobs. Each airline in turn ran out of money before the music stopped and went into serial bankruptcies.

Finally, in 2008, everyone realized there was only one answer; consolidation and real consolidation with mergers rather than waiting for liquidations. When Delta and Northwest came together they had smaller gauged fleets that were suited to their smaller size airlines. Those two fleets added together were not the right fleet for the new larger size airline from the merger, so there has been refleeting going on. MD-90's, 737-900's, and 717's are replacing DC-9's,CRJ-200's, and Saabs.

That refleeting is leading to a regional industry that is suffering from fragmentation and over capacity. You are now ground zero for the second large industry upheaval following 2008. Right now, airline managements are taking advantage of this over capacity by forcing regional providers to bid lower and lower to get enough flying to stay in business. You are on the whip end of that stick getting hit from downgrades and lower and lower pay and benefits.

There are very few answers to this problem until that over capacity sorts itself out. Both Eagle and XJet rejected contracts from managements trying to lower costs to bid for new flying. I can see where they would just say enough is enough and there is some limit below which you can't go anymore. Their mainline partners are just shifting that flying away from those carriers and their continued viability is in question. As I said before, maybe their limit has been reached and they don't care anymore, that is their decision to make.

I think that this problem will have two answers. First, regional consolidation is a must. I believe that union leaders in that segment should start to work together to try to smooth out consolidation as much as possible and encourage true consolidation instead of just waiting for someone else to go out of business.

The second answer is the lack of new entrants into the industry. I believe that management is being very short sighted about this. Their view is that they won't have a pilot shortage until the regional industry sorts itself out in the next few years. I think that will be too late to start attracting new talent to the profession. We all know that the bottom line is they will need to pay regional pilots more to attract more people to the profession. They are past the point where they need to start raising what are the entry level salaries to our profession.

I think that ALPA is continuing to engage managements on all levels along with the government to work through this issue. We shouldn't lower standards we should raise the pay. In this era where quarterly results are the focus of many managers, ALPA needs to play long ball and remind them that the world will not end three months from now.

So yes, the answers are different for your airline right now than they are for mine. Probably not a satisfactory answer, but I think you have good leadership and I know that the entire union is thinking about your problems and seeking solutions. I wish we could snap our fingers but it really just takes work and more work.