Imapilot2

I would like to see a "look forward" min day of 5:15. Also trip guarantee for both reserve and line holders for green slips. You get called, get babysitter, dressed and packed, drive to airport.....you get paid.

DAL 88 Driver

I agree with you to that point.

In times of adversity, it's how we react that defines ones character. We don't know what JM would have done after bankruptcy because he didn't get the chance. LM's track record is clear.

Sure, we got more improvements than the other bankrupt carrier's pilot groups got. But, IMO, we did this at the expense of resigning ourselves to bankruptcy as a reset. LM's "proactive engagement" (I would say "proactive appeasement" is more like it) has certainly kept labor peace at Delta... but it's also set expectations that restoration or anything even remotely close to restoration is off the table. Management has every reason to believe that the "pilot cost dragon" has been slayed once and for all, never to be revisited.

Would JM have made this mistake? Who knows? But my gut instinct is he would not have.

For those of us who have a problem with LM, I think this is what it revolves around. The guy (along with his disciples) has lead us into a position where restoration is for all intents and purposes off the table.

Hey, we're back to agreeing!

tsquare

I think what he was trying to say is that JM is viewed thru a rose colored prism as having brought C2K and nothing else. I agree with your statement that his post doesn't tell the whole story, and that all the dALPA leaders have been there at difficult times. The level of difficulty is of course dependent on the time they were there. I also think what he was trying to do is to tell the other side of the mythical JM was god story. He wasn't, anymore than LM is the devil. He was the guy in the job at the time. We can argue till the cows come back to Capistrano about the effectiveness of ANY dALPA/ALPA leader, and not change anybody's mind. I know who has done a good job, and who hasn't as far as I am concerned. Time will tell going forward whether or not the other guys can do better. My guns are loaded for that.

tsquare

Reserve coverage should take into account for all bases within a 2 hour flight of the one you are in. For example: If your reserve levels are low in NY, and ATL (for example) are fat, capped reserve days go away for NY pilots. The company has the luxury to cover a NY trip with an ATL reserve, we should be able to take advantage of that also. It's not right for lineholders to have their hands tied when it is the company that determines manning. If they continually understaff one base, and over another, we should not be penalized. And don't even bring up the manning formula. It is only slightly more believable than Sasquatch. It does not exist in any meaningful form.

scambo1

Absolutely!! TRUTH

DAL 88 Driver

I have absolutely no problem with executives being well compensated. They should be! Executives (especially senior executives) have a tremendous amount of responsibility. It's sometimes a 24/7 job and certainly not a "park it and forget it" job like ours.

But there's a very important aspect of management that I think you're glossing over here. It's called "leadership." If you were in the military, you probably know something about that. Good leaders do not handsomely reward themselves while compensating their employees as if the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Lee Moak's "proactive engagement" has set expectations and set the tone that Delta pilots are okay with bankruptcy as a reset and do not expect restoration. This gives our management a pass to continue this paradigm with a clear conscience.

We need our representation to engage Delta management on this issue, not sweep it under the rug or walk on eggshells around it. By pointing out the dramatic increases in executive compensation compared to our continued bankruptcy reset compensation, we are simply illustrating a leadership shortcoming that management may not realize they have (because we've sent the wrong signal and set the wrong expectations with them).

It has nothing to do with envy or jealousy regarding what anyone else makes.

alfaromeo

There is no difference in our goals; we all want the same thing, more money, more time off, more benefits, the whole package. Despite the lame webboard arguments to the contrary, there is not one pilot involved in negotiating our contract that does benefit from all those things. Their interests are directly aligned, they have no reason to accept anything less than the maximum available amount of money. Any argument to the contrary is just made up crap.

The only difference is the path to get there. You believe in the emotional side of the argument. Your idea is that the only thing we lack is the will to get the job done. If you create these emotional propaganda based arguments like executive compensation, you can generate massive contractual gains through sheer will of effort. For you, any contractual shortfalls are merely a lack of concentration and effort. So you create these emotional arguments based on what we made a decade ago, or what management is making, or you use conflated statistics to try to get your way.

An example is your claim that pay banding will cost 1,000 jobs. In order to save 1,000 jobs, you would have to have at least 1,000 pilots in training per month, meaning that every pilot on the seniority list would have to go through training each year. If you assume that pay banding would save half the training slots, an aggressive assumption, you would be saying that Delta manages 24,000 training events per year, or each pilot goes through upgrade school every 6 months. If that argument were brought forth to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of our careers, you will be laughed out of the room. Same as your claim that $86,000 per year compensation increase is nothing.

My view is simple. Our contract will be based on economics. That is how the company views it and more importantly that is how the NMB views it. They talk about the zone of reasonableness and what they mean is use economics to justify your position,not emotion. Emotionalism gets you parked for years and years. There is a reason I can't buy a new Mercedes for $100 and a reason why I can't buy an apartment in Manhattan for $1,000. It is all economics. No matter how much emotional propaganda I spit out, I can't close a deal on those terms.

On that chart above, I asked you to look at all the zeros on the left side of the chart. That is the result of pilot groups negotiating from emotion and not economics. History has shown that my way of looking at things has succeeded where others failed using your way. I know that many believe that if they just use the emotional method but just become more emotional, then it will work. It doesn't. The rest of the piloting industry has come to the Delta way of thinking. Look at how the APA is now dealing with their JCBA. No threats to meet them at the fiery gates of hell, just an economic analysis of the state of their company and the state of their contract in relation to the rest of the industry. This is the path to success.

I know the big joke is about the time value of money, but it is not a joke. Look below at how hard it is to catch up if you blow two years of negotiating. Even I could make a touchdown in the NFL if they put me at the one yard line and put the defense back at the 50.

pilotjockey

that chart up put out basically says that 4/8/3/3 and two years of nothing is more money than two years of nothing followed by 13.8/13.8/13.8 thats interesting, but in 2017 we would be $40 hour shy on method one and would need a 23% increase to catch up to method two. oh and thanks to the suggestion for the webinar from whoever, i did the 1100 one just now and it was informative, the new alpos seem to have high standards and be willing to listen and respond for a change lets just hope its not window dressing

alfaromeo

The chart also shows that you get nothing for the first two years after C2012. What is the chance of getting three years of 13.8% in a row? Zero. I was just pointing out that once you get behind, catching up is nearly impossible. In fact, the first time any other pilot group catches us in 2016. And that is just current pay rates, once you get a couple of years out, there is no such thing as full retro pay, it is a myth.

Before C2012 the entire rest of the industry got nothing. In 2013 the rest of the industry got about 20-35% raises and were still behind us. Can you provide any explanation of why 2013 and beyond was so different from 2012 and before? If I showed that chart to 1,000 data analysts, how many would conclude that there was a clear statistical difference between before 2012 and after 2012? All 1,000? I still have not heard one clear explanation about how this difference occurred other than our C2012 changed the entire negotiating dynamic and produced these massive increases amongst the other pilot groups. Please explain it to me.

DAL 88 Driver

That's slick, Alfa. Really slick.

So I guess your assumption is that we all retire at the end of 2017? Did you notice where your "average" rate is at that point in the comparison? (More importantly, did you think we wouldn't notice?)

So (for those of you in Rio Linda/Herndon)... notice that the rate in the "2 yr past amendable" example ends up at $254.22, while the rate in the C2012 example ends up at $206.50. That's going to make a difference in 2018 of almost $50 per hour, and then again in 2019 and so forth and so forth (unless something else is negotiated for those years). Plus, in terms of strategy, the "2 yr past amendable" example you gave also establishes that we are actually working and intend to restore our pay, not establish "reasonable" improvements to unreasonable bankruptcy related pay cuts as the new norm.

I sure hope our MEC is not listening to you!