I did not skip it at all. When we go to mediation everything regarding productivity verses other airlines will be analyzed down to single digits for jobs. What matters in the end is how we compare overall to UAL and AA. Sadly the mediation process is geared to driving everything to the industry average. It's a failed process we have to live with.

Hear that? It's a stampede by applicants who were trying to decide between UAL or Delta.

RA is crazy if he thinks he'll hire top talent by being a penny pincher.

irt the our latest counter... 'that is not the direction... taken'?

Huh? We must be reading two different mec comm releases. Yes... pay is front and center... in hourly rates and by maintaining profit sharing. They are the two most significant items.

But I'm not reading concessions in any other section that would remotely define the counter as an 'exchange of value' strategy..... which the failed ta CLEARLY WAS.

That said....I'm going to keep voting NO until we get a TA that represents both EQUITY and value for this group.

One thing that continually gets overlooked is the fact that essentially PBS is a program that turns a PWA into a flight schedule.

As Herk pointed out above we could easily have trips touching with PBS - just drop the vacation onto a schedule after the bidding is done.

Now it would be foolish to ignore the fact that PBS does in fact enable quite a lot of efficiencies that were not possible with LOT bidding but it all goes back to what is agreed to in the PWA.

Speaking of vacation, it was LOA 51 with the BK gun to our head that reduced vacation from 6 weeks to 5 so I am hard pressed to find any reason that we should not be improving our vacation substantially on what is clearly one of the very worst in the industry.:confused:

Scoop

Maddogflier what is your data that shows UAL pilots are more "productive" than DAL pilots? Talking to my buddies at United, they actually adequately staff their fleets with approximately 20 percent reserves in each category. And although they may sit a lot of shortcalls, they fly significantly less than us. Name one narrowbody category at Delta that has 20 percent reserve coverage. There aren't any. I bid reserve. I fly every single day. If you think United pilots are working harder than us they are not. Even some UAL 757 pilots are going back to the sim every 90 days for recency. That's unheard of at Delta.

I have never made the statement they are more productive then we are. I don't know. The only part on productivity I am sure of is the ability to roll X days without penalty. In mediation they will as I posted run those numbers over and over. We have good people on our side making sure we get a fair interpretation.
All of the above is really irrelevant. The forum seems to want to bury their heads in the sand with where the negotiations are heading. I hope I am wrong but everything I see indicates the company is going into the classic stall mode every airline management has seemed to favor the last 20 years.
The 10,000 dollar question is how do we bring the company to the table to truly negotiate. Most pilots I see act as if they are not even working under a expired contract. I do love the bring on mediation posts. Anyone posting that has not looked at the history of mediation or the current state. We need a catalyst to bring the company to the table with the intent to get a agreement. I really hope JM has something up his sleeve to be that catalyst.

Its not expired. Its amendable. If it were expired we would be playing an entirely different game.

I like your point here. Let's see if that changes depending on what happens in the Jan 29 meeting.

It's expired as far as I am concerned. I used that term intentionally.

We doubled down on profit sharing in 2015 and it benefited us. Now we're doubling down on profit sharing for 2016. The company when they dish out our PS checks in 2017 will have to appease the non-contract employees somehow, when we have 23 to 25 percent checks while theirs are down to around 10 percent or maybe less. And at that point 3.b.4 will trigger. And if they find away around it, so be it. But I like holding on to our leverage. Our work rules and PS are not for sale.