Sick leave interpretation?
 

I saw this on chitchat and wanted to start a discussion to see if the premise is sound.

Exactly. Not only that, even the 14 is statistically hardly ever going to be 14 in a rolling 365, unless you always take the 14th day prior to the 364th rolling day. You will easily bump against 14 in a rolling 365 every other calendar 365 while using less than 14.

Plus that sneaky double whammy threshold.

They way over reached with this. Dramatically. And supposedly because a few abusers use all their sick time without going on disability. Well those guys are by definition already providing 170 hours verified or more anyway.

That is correct. You will have to average less than 63 hours in any rolling 365 day period compared to less than 100 now.

That is NOT correct. There are two separate thresholds:

Verification - 15 days in rolling 365

Medical Release - 24 days in rolling 365 or 56 in rolling 1095.

Each is independent of the other, so there's no way the math in your post works.

I am a the spouse of a probationary pilot but as a lawyer, I am following this TA closely as I want to know the rules and the history when I am reading c2018 to help my husband understand and vote.

Sorry if this is off a little from this thread but not sure which SL thread it should be in so I picked the top one.

There is a part of the TA that is confusing me. And I was hoping someone can explain

IS SL Abuse being defined as 20% of pilots using more than 50% of sick leave (or 50 hours a year)? Is that it or is it 20% of Pilots using more than 50% of sick leave in suspicious patterns?

Researched but non verifiable (by me) facts

12,430 pilots at Delta so 20% is 2,486

based on the mandatory retirement info on APC there are 2,210 mandatory Delta retirements at Delta between 2015 and 2020 so 17.8% of the Delta pilot workforce is over age 60.

Assumptions

50% of allowed sick leave of 100 hours is 50 hours so 6.25 days (8 hours a day as is calculated at every other office I have worked at) of sick leave a year is being used by these SL abusive pilots. This is my biggest assumption

Flying Days and non flying days are counted as sick leave days whether you were scheduled to fly or not.

Pilots tend to be a healthy bunch but you have to assume that a majority of the over 60 pilots are married to spouses over 60 who may also have issues (I understand not all pilots can use sick leave for this issue but some can)

In my husband's Indoc class well more than 50% of the class had at least one child under 5 at home nearly all had at least one in elementary school. I could not find the numbers of new hires in the last 5 years but I think you can conservatory assume 5% of the base pilots have a child under 5 (ie in day care) at home so that is another 621 pilots

Now add in average diagnosis rates for major medical issues in the country but cut it in half because pilots tend to be healthier but tend to be more active which can result in injury

Then you have to account for flu or various other illnesses in the middle 78% (9,682) of you account for 10% of the pool contracting something small or injuring themselves (or their spouse or child for those that can use that)

Analysis

you are looking at 30.6% of the pool of pilots or 3799 pilots each year that can reasonably have to take 7 days of sick leave a year.


To me 20% of pilots using 50% of their sick leave seems to be what the company should be expecting unless there is something wrong with 1) my understanding of the definition of the term, 2) my math, 3) my limited understanding of the current sick leave rules or 4) my assumptions and I come to you all as I have exhausted my ability to research on my own.

Now if it is 20% of pilots who use 50% of sick leave and are only sick on Christmas Thanksgiving Fathers Day and X days that they were denied obviously TOTALLY different story.

Please Advise.

They just want to treat pilots like flight attendants when it comes to sick leave.........

The company's definition of abuse is somewhat open ended to my understanding. Pilots are provided 240 hours of sick leave which counts against flight pay. 100 of those hours are currently un verified meaning you don't need a doctors note.

I have no idea what they mean by abuse.

My sense is that some pilots have used all 240 hours.

Again I think if there is actual abuse, the company has a personnel department to handle that. The company should not be trying to paint sick in a blind canyon. The pilots union should not have accepted the company's data without 100% pushback.

The pilots should not vote for degradations in sick language. The FAA has an IMSAFE checklist of things you should not legally fly with. This flies in the face of that.

Your 8 hours for a day of work is incorrect...typically a day of work is 5.15 hours...at least our contract guarantees that much pay. A 4 day trip=approx 21 hours.

Other than that, your work is pretty good. I feel the company is trying to reduce sick leave because they are short staffed in most categories and can save money by intimidating us to not call in sick as much. It would be cheaper than hiring a few hundred more guys to adequately staff our airline.

That and the FO LCA trip pulls will have a dramatic effect on our staffing numbers in my opinion, and will save them from the shortage they induced and save millions going forward.

I'd explain it to you like this: Our sick leave in its current form is a contractual agreement. The risks of working when we shouldn't be are much greater for us than any other professional. Ask your wife about the imsafe checklist.

Some people breeze through life with fewer issues than others, but the fact is I don't want the pilot flying my family to Disneyland to be in anything less than tip-top flying conidtion, I'm sure you feel the same.

So whether or not some people are using it more than others is quite honestly irrelevant. Some people simply may have more frequent issues than others. If the company thinks pilot XYZ has been calling out every Christmas for years then they already have means of taking action to rectify that.

So what happens if they get a records check for something that was never verified, nor had to be verified, nor had to even be reported, to anyone, in the first place?

The entire program was written by a masterful labor busting legal team and it is a huge threat to safety and to our careers.