Why I'm Voting Yes.
 

Dear Fellow Brother Delta Pilots,

There's a ton of emotion going on in everything I've read online, and no obvious fixes for anything that is bothering the NO crowd. Hey, if you want to vote NO, vote NO! All of the complaining and rancor sounds like a squirrel that was stuck in the bird feeder once.

I feel pretty qualified to put my reasons for voting yes. I was furloughed, then subsequently kicked in the balls over and over by the company AND ALPA during the bankruptcy. Yay! I was so disenfranchised by ALPA that I did send in 2 - count 'em- two DPA cards.

My biggest point of contention was the RJ. Delta and ALPA gave our jobs away en masse during a dark period in our history. Through contractual gains and the reality that RJ's suck in general, they are going away, and scope is no longer a major point of contention for me anymore. -Though it could be, just not now.

Three years ago, I sounded like the squirrel in the birdhouse. After our massive sacrifices 12-3-3 sounded grossly inadequate. But my reps told me to be patient, play along, and things will get better. So I did. During this latest contract survey, I wanted two things: 1). Don't change the work rules. My quality of life is outstanding, don't mess it up. 2). Give me a generous raise, and get RID of profit sharing.

So in this T/A, it appears as though ALPA listened to my desires, specifically. -That's a joke, folks. The work rules haven't really changed. Yes, there were abuses of sick leave, and guys were bidding check airman trips so they wouldn't have to fly or could greenslip. Tell ya what. If I was making over 400k per year as a narrowbody FO, this contract would have me screaming mad and spitting bullets, too. But I'm not, and it doesn't. So the work rules don't give me any heartburn.

The profit-sharing thing: I don't particularly like profit sharing. Oh, if the company is doing well, it's great! If not, not so great. You can end up having wild swings in your income from year to year. And although I've been a pretty successful entrepreneur in other ventures, I rather like my airline income to be stable. You and I have absolutely no control over anything that could affect profit sharing. Why take the risk? There's no upside.

So in my infinitesimally small brain, I gave some thought as to what kind of raise I'd like in order to completely get rid of profit sharing. I came up with +/- 25%. And I realize that the company wasn't going to give me a 25% raise no matter what, even if profit sharing no longer exists. But how was ALPA going to deal with me and my lofty goals?

Well, they cut a compromise that suits me just fine. An 18% raise while retaining profit sharing. I don't have a problem with that. You know how earlier I stated that ALPA told me to just go with the program three years ago? By the time this contract is signed, (If it is, not trying to be flame bait here) we will be up 32% in wages in three years. By the time the profit sharing clause kicks in, we'll be up 35%, and by contract end, 38% from where were were three years ago. I like the short term of this contract. Three years from now we could be up over 50% from three years ago. That's huge. It's my humble opinion that you restore the profession in bits and pieces, like we are witnessing now. Not in a grand-slam shot-heard-around-the world. As great as that would be, that's not going to happen.

Now this part cracks me up: For years, were were insanely jealous of SWA wages. We wanted them! On our last signing, we were ****ed-off that it was going to take THREE YEARS to reach 737 parity with SWA. At that same time three years ago, they started negotiations with their company as well. They still don't have a deal, and we're fixin' to exceed their rates by a large margin. As well we should, dammit! But don't get mo wrong, let them get a contract that exceeds ours again, so we can exceed theirs again, ad infinitum.

So in closing, thanks for listening. I know that most on this forum will disagree, and in fact there's a thread wondering if yes voters are a silent majority, because yes voters just aren't posting. Well here you go! And again, if all of the aforementioned reason I mentioned don't work for you, then by all means, vote NO. If this T/A is turned down, it's not the end of the world. We'll just re-group, and maybe get a better deal, or maybe be like SWA and not have to worry about ANY deal for the next three years.

Cheers,

Woofers

Space reserved...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have several friends at SWA and I finally make as much as they do as a 777 Capt with my profit sharing. With 28 years I finally make as much as their 737 Capts. Of course all the Southwest stock they have received over the years is worth millions.

From the content of your post, pay is seemingly the most important thing to you, that's fine. In my opinion and many others we are not restoring the profession at all, in fact we are making it worse with this TA. This TA will make us work more which therefore requires fewer pilots to run the airline. I would argue that we are in fact harming the profession in bits and pieces.

I was also furloughed and then spent a good 5 years as a junior 88 FO largely working weekends and holidays. I for one refuse to pull the ladder up behind me.

Woofers,

You are kidding yourself if you think the LCA cutout will not affect you in your years here. Along with this there are some major QOL issues with this TA that more than likely will be here to stay.

Remember, that precious pay raise you are getting is very easy to change in the future, not so much with QOL stuff.

I would encourage you to carefully weigh the effects of these. Even though some of the issues do not harm me personally, I will NOT support a TA that hurts any of us here at DAL.

This is one thing I DON'T understand about pilots...

So, the company's goal is to maximize profits. They will try to do it ANYWAY they can.
JV Flying, Scope, maintenance, extra fees for services, etc..

Delta MX handles numerous other carries overseas. Delta gains a profit from that.
Delta sells tickets on other Alliance Code Share carriers.. again, Profits for Mother Delta.

If Delta could (like NUMEROUS other carriers,) they would sell almost all tickets but outsource most of the flying. That seems to be the way the change in your JV is going.. giving Delta (the company) the chance to maximize even more profits.

So.. why would you want to dilute your share of PS?
If you are not going to fly EVERY Delta passenger (a person who buys a ticket through Delta).. then why not demand a portion of the profit from the passenger who flies from A to B with an Alliance carrier because Delta has decided to not fly that route themselves.. yet will still make a profit from that passenger and route?!

Sad that most pilots only look at Payrates without looking at the big picture and the whole CBA/PWA/TA~

Motch

PS> I realize that Woofers is probable a troll or ALPA/Management type, here to push their agenda [Join date Jun 2015?!, and this is their 1st post?!].. but had to get this point out there, once and for all.

We are going to get annual raises when the TA is rejected. Read the contract.

Our fellow employees will get a minimum of 4% annually.

There is zero reason to vote yes unless you are not paying attention.

Read the most recent Council 66 update.

"...your mandate and the direction given to the negotiators never included making drastic sacrifices to important sections of our contract during such prosperous times."

What more needs to be said?
__________________

If the TA put OE recovery back into the pwa then yes this would only affect 2% of the FOs.

But that's not what this is. They're pulling a significant amount of FO trips out of pbs so we don't get them. That affects every FO from the first to the plug. It's a detriment to QOL as a large number of preferential trips are pulled whether the lca intends on keeping the trips or not.

It's a horrible idea and my number one reason to vote no.

Exactly....This is Draconian! Going back to the way it was in Bankruptcy would be an improvement to what is being proposed. I'm just amazed they agreed to this turd. Woofer will be howling when those lines pulled cause him to miss christmas. Those guys in the 40-50% range in categories will fall out of the holiday range imo.

Woofers thanks for posting your rationale for voting yes, as it takes some courage to throw yourself into the pit to face a large opposition.

With that said, I hope that you do realize this affects your QOL much more than any of us can comprehend. Less widebody opportunities and lower paying replacement aircraft (739, 321, e190) are driving pilot wages in the wrong direction, and the higher TLV and LCA bidding will have a detrimental effect on everyone. If you are a senior FO, a lot of the trips youre bidding will disappear. Someone ran them for the md88 in ATL and found that 90 percent of LCA trips had weekends off. 90 percent. If you are a CA, and since youve been furloughed are probably not super senior, you can expect that many of these "400k FOs" who are senior to you are going to upgrade above you and push you down.

Overall a decent argument, but it appears your ves vote is partly due to some resentment of FOs who bid with LCAs and for that I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to spite them. Were all in this together, everybody wins this way. We have lots of losers (every pilot) under the new TA.

Well there you go. :D

Carl

Of u are an fo. You will make more money and have better trips iver the next 3 years if the TA fails

I thought it was going to be a vastly improved recovery. IMO they could have gotten that easy. Even that would have been a slight negative to FO's at large (less green slips because of the ability to use them for recovery, etc) but that could have been offset by a higher vacation day (3:45 to 4 hours pay and credit) but that ball was dropped, recovered by the other team while we fell down and watched them score.

Instead of reasonable recovery, which wouldn't have been nearly as big of a concession, we let them go nuckear on us and just vaporize the trips completely. :(

you don't like profit sharing, because you want your airline income to be stable?

well....ive been in the airline industry a good while, and if I have realized anything at all....it is if you are in the airline business for 'stable' income.....you picked the wrong occupation.

FOs making 400K a year. Ah yes, the straw man. Did you ever stop and think....if the company would simply adequately staff the categories and bases where these 'abuses' are occurring they could fix their own problem?

From a corporation point of view PS is more stable of a mechanism for pay than guaranteed rates in Section 3s.

Woofers, good on you for stating your case, at least you are not blindly following what the MEC told you to think.

You do know why you were furloughed, right? You did see all the RJ growth while you were furloughed, right?

Have you read any of the explanations from the No voting LEC reps, in regards to our JV Scope, and what affect switching from equal seats, to equal block hours could have on you, if you ever want to fly bigger, higher paying airplanes, across the world?

You already got to experience what can happen with weak Domestic Scope language when you were furloughed, now you want to experience what weaker International Scope language could do to your next seat? Poof, gone.

I hope you like flying a 737 or A321 around for the rest of your career.

The good news? Delta will be making HUGE profits when they outsource more of our flying!

But you don't even want a piece of those Profits? Really?

Dear Woofers,
You mentioned RJ thing, well wait and see another gigantic drop in scope.
If C15 is passed nothing stops the company from replacing B767's across the Atlantic with B737's. RA stated many time that we should have taken all 100 -900 as ER's, not just 50.

You might be restoring profession in those cockpits and at those rates very soon! Watching AF A380 buzzing by with thousands of Delta tickets in them!

I gave a recurrent ride today and the FO said - "I'd take a 20% pay cut if they fix the scope".

ftb......anyone who is half awake.....and has been employed in this business for any length of time (excluding perhaps airline management) will eventually come to the unavoidable conclusion it is not an economically stable industry.

never has been....and is not likely to become one.

we have always struggled coordinating the intervals of 'good times' with the intervals of amendable dates for our working agreements.

More than once, after being locked into a concessionary pwa....and with economic conditions improving....dalpa has approached delta management with overtures to modify the pwa given the improving economic performance.

and more than once...we have literally been told "a contract is a contract".

otoh...the company has sought...and almost uniformly received our 'cooperation' to modify the pwa on the downside of economic and demographic cycles.

Profit sharing is not some kind of undesirable variable in our compensation.

It is probably THE most intelligent compensation device EVER arrived at in our PWA. It is the most effective solution to the ebb and flow of the economic performance of delta.....and the amendable interval of our working agreements.

will profit sharing diminish in the future?...absolutely. will it in all probability return at some future point? yes. And this return will arrive with no need to hear the words..."a contract, is a contract."

It is curious, an individual who would vote yes on this ta...and advertises entrepreneurial success that comes with being an equity holder in a business activity......would then seek to diminish....and...eventually eliminate the ownership position profit sharing represents at delta not only just for the pilots....but ALL the employees.

Here is the biggest flaw in your logic. You (and apparently DALPA) assume Delta in intransigent and accept them at face value when they say "This is our last and best offer - take it or leave it."

Well the company has already yielded on the three year look-back concerning sick leave. So just supposing there was not a outcry over this TA (there is) we would have approved the TA and would be stuck with a 3 year look-back. We haven't even voted yet and the company has already backed off its "Last and best final offer." Imagine what we might be able to obtain with a resounding No vote?


Finally - Thanks for posting. Its good to see the logic of some of the yes voters even though I think you are wrong.

Scoop

If any FO does not think that they will be affected by the OE/TOE trip blocked they are just wrong!!!

On the 7ER cat in just ATL, there are 368 Captains, aprox 45 of them are LCA. If they bid 4 trips/mo that makes 180 trips per month to LCA. Now take 75% of those 180 trips and you have 135 trips that are unbiddable per month!


At 4 trips per PBS FO line, that equals 34 bottom lines GONE!!! 34 FOs back on RSV!! Not to mention the hundreds of higher preferences not awarded that would have been if blocked trips were available.


What will happen as retirements increase and training increases?

Anyone noticing the increase in Virgin Atlantic on our routes. Atlanta, specifically. Three widebodys at F concourse daily. We now own 49% of the relatively small company that flies only widebodies. With the new JV clause, are we gonna become a continental-connector for our "partners"? With the 747s going away and the JV thing, we may see ripples all the way down the system, so "YES" voters may not be as safe in QOL as you think. We are all affected.

I had a drink with a Virgin Atlantic Marketing guy in DTW a few weeks ago (before the TA was announced). He said that he was there to survey for growth. Nice guy, but ***?!

No grooming this guy, he's ready for the 4th floor.

Not everyone can be persuaded to vote rationally. I consider this guy's view of sick leave concessions and FO trip pulls to be irrational. And there is nothing anybody can do to show him what a huge deal the concessions in this POS mean to our QOL. In short, he and an unknown number of us are lost causes reference the vote.

If we vote it down, I feel it will be very close.

We've got to continue to get the word out, respectfully yet persistently, and "read" the yes voters we encounter to see where they might be persuaded to look beyond the money--or show them the math indicating a no is not as risky as DALPA would have them believe.

Don't post on this thread. I know I am violating my own directive but this thread should die its own natural death and be spooled to page two. This is just the kind of thinking we need to defeat. It may have worked in the past TVM, all or nuthin', shiny new jets, Rush rush rush. I am 3 years wiser now and see the disfunction. C2012 was not great but it's better than this.

a 3 year tour....
 

one of my complaints is this TA is only for three years! I really don't want to degrade this profession and take more concessions in another three years!:rolleyes:

Only the most senior there have stock worth that. I know some that got hired there 15 years ago that have nothing remotely like that.

Don't worry the concessions within it are permanent.

It's this simple:

Is the company in compliance today with the JV scope:

NO


Will the company be in compliance if we ratify this TA


YES



No brainer vote for for me. NO.

Just as simple is:

Will we have leverage by continuing with our current contract?

YES. HUGE.

Will we have leverage by signing this TA?

NO. NONE.

Carl

SUMMARY of his post: I am voting yes because my hourly rate will be higher with TA than without.

At least he's honest about that. He is within his rights to vote as he sees fit and his logic no matter what it is is no less valid than any of ours. I applaud his courage to come on here and state as such and his reasons for doing so.

Yes. He is within his right to vote as he sees fit. But, just like with politics, we hate it when people vote when they are uninformed.


So, with that in mind, is I t really ok for him to say he's going to vote in favor of the TA, because he will have higher pay rates, if he doesn't know that 5.74% of his January 1, 2016 "pay raise" will be paid by his loss in his profit-sharing?

Don't you want him to at least know that BEFORE you applaud his logic?

I do.

I'm guessing the OP did the same math that I have done and realized that the profit sharing is not being "lost" but rather converted to pay rates that we will get whether Delta makes a profit or not.

Now if you are saying that it should be more or that we should have kept both, I agree but that isn't the choice I'm faced with right now. It's a decision between what is on the table and the possibility of going back for more, with no guarantee (or likelihood IMO) that we will significantly outpace the $ on the table to an extent that it justifies the risk of the $ in hand.

Now if your thing is the FO trip pull issue then that is separate from the $, and I can understand where you're coming from.

On straight $ though, the math and probability do not favor us doing better by sending it back. It's not FUD (as I'm sure I'll be accused of in the subsequent posts) it is basic math that would require a relatively quick, better deal.

My guess is most yes voters have done this math and come to a similar conclusion.

The next consideration is how a yes or no will play out when the profit rocket changes trajectory. Will we make billions in profit forever? Maybe, maybe not. The PS conversion puts $ in my account as if we made $6B every year whether we do or not.

I want it to be more too, but that isn't the decision we're making now. The choice is:

Yes I'll take the deal

OR

No I'll take door #2 which allows me to keep all my trips* in the PBS run but will possibly/probably result in less $ IMO


* I keep mentioning this because it is the only issue I have with the TA. The rest is overblown, mostly because it is being painted in a negative light by the NO sales team. I am specifically referring to sick, profit sharing and scope. I'm satisfied with all 3 of those topics. FO trips not so much but I will probably get over it weighed against the rest of the positives.

Flame away! :p

Leine,

All work rules are interrelated. Straight pay rates do not necessarily mean you will make more money. This TA is a paycut (more accurately a W2 cut) for me and many others. There are no positives that I can hang my hat on.

There are some crumbs, yes. But, the 8% isn't even one of them.

No way, no how is this TA a gain on anything but spun costing using the most favorable conditions. It's a loss and should never have been TA-ed.

I'm guessing by flame away, you are dismissing the various rep letters who have said the same things as me.

$5,000,000,000 buy back (a waste of money) and I hold 30,000 shares of delta stock. I am a Delta pilot first and a shareholder second.

This TA is absolutely a sellout. If this was war, these reps and shadow MEC members would be lined up against a wall, blindfolded, given a cigarette and shot.

They are traitors. Period.

Where is it stated the 3 year look back has changed. Been taking a break from here for a couple of days.

I am still a no vote.

That might be a little harsh. I would say hard labor for life would be more appropriate. Send them to the Gulag!

I can live with that.:D