Originally Posted by sailingfun (Post 1018692)

Carl, DPA posted on their website that it was critical that they have enough cards to call for a election by 1 Jan 11 in order to be in place on the property by the start of summer and build a war chest and infrastructure to properly represent the pilots in the coming negotiations. When they failed in that goal they simply deleted it from the website. Was it critical or not? Were they lying then or lying now?

Originally Posted by Denny Crane (Post 1018818)

Does anyone really expect to see what is in the contract opener? I would be very surprised if it is published. There may be rumors but I highly doubt that it will be made public.

Denny

Originally Posted by Bill Lumberg (Post 1018821)

There should be a wish list published, and that should come from the survey. Is it that hard to post "Southwest +1% for the 737s first year of the contract, plus tighter Scope.". Is that too tough? Is that a secret? Compare us to Southwest, and our JV partners too while we're at it. I saw that on a separate forum and agree with that also.

Originally Posted by DAL 88 Driver (Post 1018681)

Well there's your mistake. You're trying to use pay rates and are comparing apples and oranges. The average SWA Captain makes over $230k/year. Let's just use an even $230k for comparison. So what did an MD-88 Captain (the closest we have to the kind of flying SWA does) make in 2004 (C2K rates) prior to our pay cuts? Well, the rate was $237.37/hour. At 75 hours per month, that Captain made $213,633 for the year. Adjust that for inflation (source: Tom's Inflation Calculator) and you get $252,803.18 today. It would require no more than a 10% pay increase for SWA Captains to be making our C2K + inflation for the same type of flying. I wouldn't call that "a country mile", but I guess you can if you want to. :eek:

Originally Posted by Carl Spackler (Post 1018779)

Totally incorrect. You keep looking at just the pay rates and ignore the W2's. Why do you do that?

Originally Posted by Bill Lumberg (Post 1018821)

There should be a wish list published, and that should come from the survey. Is it that hard to post "Southwest +1% for the 737s first year of the contract, plus tighter Scope.". Is that too tough? Is that a secret? Compare us to Southwest, and our JV partners too while we're at it. I saw that on a separate forum and agree with that also.

Originally Posted by scambo1 (Post 1018825)

His words not mine: I cant complain, I made over 200 grand last year, 10K in profit sharing plus the company contributed 16.5K to my 401k.

He's an 8th year SWA FO.

Originally Posted by Denny Crane (Post 1018839)

Do you really want the union to telegraph to the Company that Southwest +1% is the minimum you will take? I sure don't want the union to do that!! I want them to wring as much blood out of that onion as possible!

I'm just saying that I don't think we will see the contract opener in any offical sense. We will probably get rumor and inuendo but nothing offical.

Denny

Originally Posted by Wilbur Wright (Post 1018858)

I agree it would be stupid to announce a SWA+1 minimum.

When you go to sell a house to you tell the buyer, I'm asking for $1 million and I don't care how hard you negotiate, my absolute minimum is $700k?

I would be very, very surprised if we didn't see the opener. We always have in the past.