Neither do we. Delta gives us 15% of our earnings toward our retirement. How that compares to 60% FAE is, of course, a different question, and varies widely depending upon hire age, market conditions, etc.

That said, we all saw how the 1986 pilot's retirement plan worked out.

True dat!!

 

38% on day one and willing to wait as long as Delta is willing to live without labor peace.

Now I have a question for you. Given the results of where the Delta pilot's contract leads the industry...

How many areas of our industry's contracts should Delta pilots lead?

Carl

 

Do you think labor peace alone is worth 38% or are other areas of leverage worth something and labor peace brings us up to 38%? How much do you think labor peace is worth?

Does anyone know what our current contract costs? It would be interesting to estimate a cost for certain items. For instance if we think labor peace is worth 10% we could say it is worth $xxx million. I think that would be useful in determining how reasonable one's position is.

I'm not picking on you Carl. 38% is pretty specific so you must have put some thought into it. I'm interested in your cost projections. 38% sounds pretty good. How do we get there?

 

I basically agree with you here, Alan. However, for those of us who had the pension and lost it, there is lost value that has not been recouped. I'm not at all suggesting we should return to a DB. in fact, I absolutely do NOT want to do that. But that lost value is real and should be part of the context for the improvements we seek going forward.

To be clear... when I talk about "lost value" I'm not talking about comparing how my retirement is turning out versus how it would have turned out with the pension. It looks like I'm actually going to end up doing better than I would have with the pension. What I'm talking about is that the pension represented a certain value, and that value was lost.

When you factor in things like the claim, note, merger stock, company contributions, etc., it offsets SOME of that lost value but not all of it. (Plus, wasn't all of that touted as being intended to partially offset the pay cuts, not the retirement?) Don't forget we already had a 401k in addition to the pension.

And it should be noted that not everybody is in the same position I am when comparing their 401k (DPSP) to what they would have had with the pension. It's all subject to the whims of the market and how each of us individually handles that.

 

Since 38% comes up quite a bit short of restoring the pay cuts we took in an extreme financial crisis for Delta, I think Carl is being quite reasonable.

I'm willing to be even more reasonable. I'd take 25% on day one, as long as the next 3 or 4 years provided increases large enough to get us close to full restoration of those pay cuts (in terms of buying power) by that point.

I realize your context for this discussion is very limited, Oberon. But the perspective Carl and I are giving is the perspective of someone who has been around this profession quite a bit longer and apparently has a better appreciation for the value of what we do as professional aviators.

 

Cute. You make these results sound like some non-biased third-party study, as opposed to your own personal over-simplified checklist.

 

I agree completely. I was simply pointing out to Timbo that Delta does fund our retirement today, albeit in a totally different form. Each pilot's mileage in that funding will certainly vary based on any number of factors, including age, investment returns, etc.

 

That is the common phrase that is spun out by many passive, non confrontational, management buddy-buddy individuals. Some other common "lines" are:
1) Time-value
2) What are you willing to give up for that?
3) More money in your pockets
4) Keep your backpacks on
5) Wallstreet will not like that
6) We need to be sensitive to the other employee groups
7) The company will never pay us that
8) 4833 was a great achievement and raise
9) Ill take a single and a double anyday

The way you get 38% is by taking a little bit more of a risk when negotiating. You educate management, the public and the employee group that the pilots have not been restored, as of yet, and restoration is a must or else--->(put what you desire in here). The Union must be onboard with restoration, if they arent, then it will never happen.

Once we achieve restoration, then we can talk about 4 or 5 % raises going forward.

IT can be done.

TEN

 

38% on day one huh? OK.. assuming that it drags out for a couple of years. (How long is FedEx waiting now? SWA?) Each year that goes by will eat into that by a conservative 3%/year. You can do the math, I'm not gonna do it for you. ANd since you have been on top of the food chain for a million years.. hold an executive level job elsewhere... and have a pension, it is not surprising that you will be willing to wait for the brass ring. Not everybody can afford it pal.

And to use the popular vernacular... your question is a straw man. Not gonna go there, because moreover it is a stoopid question.

 

The hollow threats of "labor peace" are not nearly the leverage he wants you to think it is. We can stomp our feet till the cows return to Capistrano, but we will still go to work until we are allowed to do otherwise.