Ferd149

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Dirtdiver

Anyone have a link to the imsafe/FAA guidelines for self medication, or should I plan on calling my AME everytime I take OTC meds?

Seaslap8

I am very concerned by the sick leave changes and trying to get a firm grip on it... could you please clarify these concerns, I'm not following this post.

MOTOJOE

So we all no there is no abuse. When your sick your sick. That's why delta gives us 270 hours every year. Hers the scary part! I have talked to our negotiators, and there is no sick verification form as of yet! That wasn't negotiated. They told me it will be hashed out after TA passes. What! How can something that important not be finished. This is very bad. Vote No!

BobZ

Saying there is sick leave abuse is like saying if you don't cash your full paycheck.....there is payroll abuse.

sick leave is an earned component of each pilots compensation. It should be highly insulting for any party to insinuate using earned compensation is somehow 'abuse' or otherwise undeserved.

How about this idea.....we agree to zero paid sick leave.....all delta has to do in exchange is increase each pilots monthly credit by the number of hours that would have previously been earned as sick leave?

See....problem solved. No more sick leave abuse. Its a 'win-win' all the way around.

StripAlert

Hi Lurking,

Welcome, and thanks for posting. I think you're on the right track, but you may need to tweak your numbers and assumptions a bit. Your conclusions are valid nonetheless, and I think that explains why so many of us are so fired up about this particular portion of the TA.

Regarding hours per day, 8 is probably not a good average, as it is approaching the maximum (which—only under specific circumstances—is limited by FAR 117 to 9 per day for un-augmented domestic ops). You could use various numbers here, ranging from just under 4 hours per day (the prorated value of a reserve on-call day, depending on the number of days in a particular bid month), to 5.25 (the average daily guarantee), 2.75 (prorated from the FAR 117 limit of 1,000 hours per rolling 365 days), or 3.5 (prorated from the FAR 117 limit of 100 hours per rolling 28 days—technically 672 hours). As you can see, a case can be made for using a wide range of numbers, and a writer may choose depending on the conclusion desired... Gotta love statistics. If I were making your case, I'd probably use 5.25, because it's the minimum that a rotation could be worth per day. Delta and ALPA could probably tell you the actual average daily credit, but I don't think it's published anywhere.

Allowed sick leave usage, as defined by a pilot's sick bank, isn't 100 hours per year. That's the current limit of un-verified sick usage, before the occurrence must be verified. A pilot's sick bank is determined by years of service (longevity), with the majority of the pilot group allotted 240 hours annually, although the most senior have 270. The pilots who are dubiously referred to by Delta and ALPA as "abusers" are likely using far more than 100 hours per year on a consistent basis.

However, the assertion by the "there are abusers" crowd isn't that 20% of the pilots are using 50% of their allotted hours. Rather, it's that 20% of the pilots are using 50% of the sick leave taken by the entire pilot group as a whole. Just want to clear that up. I don't personally believe that this indicates sick leave "abuse." Every year, there are pilots who have serious injuries or illnesses, and who totally exhaust their annual sick leave allotment before going on disability.

If you look at the language in Section 14 of the TA, you'll see that non-flying days are counted as sick days only if they lie between two or more rotations that were also counted as sick days for the same illness, and, even in that case, only for the medical release thresholds, and not for the verification thresholds. (Another big problem with sick leave in this TA is that even a lawyer can't understand what the rules actually are. It's overly-complex.)

Notwithstanding the foregoing (I can't tell you how long I've waited for an attorney to turn up here, so I could write that), the issue is that there aren't actually sick leave abusers. If there were, and if the company could prove it, DALPA would put pressure on those pilots to knock it off, and, failing that, Delta could terminate them. Problem is, aside from a few that have been disciplined, Delta is unable to actually prove any sick leave "abuse."

Instead, what they are calling "abuse" is actually "increased use" of contractual sick leave benefits. For the reasons you've already identified, there are valid explanations for why this may have gone up since Contract 2012. In addition, C2012 removed a provision where a pilot would only be paid 75% of his hourly rate after crossing a rolling three-year sick leave usage threshold, which has probably resulted in less guys flying sick, rather than more staying home healthy, as the company and DALPA would have us believe.

In other words, the provisions of TA 2015 are designed to make legitimate sick leave use more onerous, for the sole purpose of reducing sick leave use. Not abuse, but use. It's a thinly-veiled attempt to control costs and mitigate a manning problem (of their own making) by pressuring pilots to come to work when they're only "a little sick" because it would involve both non-trivial effort and expense to verify a minor illness.

Currently, a pilot who is, say, in a car accident and spends 12 days in the hospital, missing 2-3 trips, can voluntarily verify that illness or injury, and not have it count against his 100 un-verified hours. Under the new TA, that verification is neither required nor permitted until the pilot exceeds 14 missed work days in a rolling year, meaning that in six months, when that pilot comes down with a cold or other minor illness and calls in sick for a 3-day trip, he'll have to see a doctor (at his own expense) to verify an illness that could've easily been treated with over-the-counter meds.

This doesn't even touch on the topic of the medical records release provisions, which raise significant privacy and health data bleed concerns (think personal physician to employer to FAA) that should never happen without the pilot's consent.

DALMD88FO

Call alpa aeromed. I do every time I take medication or have it prescribed by a doctor. It will really surprise you how long you have to wait after certain meds and that you have to wait after a med at all.

ghilis101

Labor busting is so easy these days when half the pilots on property already dislike unions.

Ive been having lengthy discussions with my company assigned new hire mentor (a YES voter) over this, and I was talking to him about sick leave. He said pilots were abusing it and the company was right to go after it, and he never gets sick anyway. Hes a 2000 hire. Im Shocked that any 2000 hire would roll over for the company after what theyve been through.

Im not making this up. Union busting is so easy now because they know how to appeal to the "manager/chief pilot" in most of us. They make us feel like "leaders." like when SD says this TA is a great deal and its in your hands. Or when RA says take this deal or else, and continue to be leaders at this company. Are you kidding me? Who falls for this garbage? Im a new hire and i dont buy it. How can people whove been here 15 years, furloughed for 5 years, even fall for this? So disturbing.

KnotSoFast

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I am not a new hire. I find it equally disturbing that a new hire can be so bitter so quickly. I bet you could still get rehired to your old 747 Ca freight job since you seem to find it so unacceptable here.
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Army80

Bob,

Not intending to pizz you off, but I think the company's perspective on sick leave is more of an "insurance", in case you get sick/injured. We get about the 3 months a year in case you get real sick or injured. The philosophy was pretty much call in sick if you are sick, come to work if you are well. No bank, no notes. (Pretty sure we have always had some type of privacy issues WRT the company requesting a medical release if they thought there was gross abuse)

Do you feel that you haven't gotten your money's worth on the fire insurance you purchase for your home each year if it doesn't burn down?

The change in 2012 to 100 hours of "unverified" sick usage might have actually lead to the increase in usage. Many pilots now look at sick time from your posted point of view. We are now living with the fallout of the transition from what could be thought of as an insurance type of model to a bank/use it or lose it model. Both systems rely on us to be good corporate citizens, but the 2012 system of a quantified value (100 hours) makes our sick benefit seem more like a bank system that you waste by not using.

It does seem weird that we are trusted with hundreds of lives and hundreds of millions but need to behave like a walmart worker when we get sick....

Fly Safe