Not according to Phil!

 

As an afficionado of long posts, I enjoyed Phil's missive. Nice writing style. I mean that sincerely.

 

Phil is a super guy (I mean that sincerely) and a great authority on beer and brewing. I'd trust him with my family's life.

However being a great guy with a clever and humorous writing style still doesn't exempt him from the facts.

 

I don't know him personally, but he's certainly articulate. I read the PS part twice. I think that's the latest crisis/drama Jerry was trying to promote, but Phil lays it out in a clearer manner.

Essentially, you have to believe that the old language would let us capture the other employees' PS, and that a long-shot grievance would have succeeded. Admittedly, the other language was not written for dual PS pools.

So IF you first make abstraction of the fact we were able to maintain our PS intact (AND the fact you have an overall deal), THEN you can complain that the long-shot payout didn't come through.

So you have Jerry cherry-picking other contracts, and Phil elegantly cherry-picking alternative outcomes.

 

Here's the Cliff Notes version of Phil's letter posted by Jerry:

1 - Management rewarded themselves first. Now it's our turn.
2 - He doesn't like Scope, Scheduling, and mostly Profit Sharing language.
3 - He mostly does not like the fact that we will drop our PS grievance.

My opinion: the overall deal is a negotiation. We kept PS intact and unchanged which puts us 5.74% better than the last TA. Also, our share of the employee profit sharing pie increases from 36% to 40% thus increasing our PS payout from where it currently stands. It decreased after the other employees got a raise last December.

In return we allowed language that made clear that our PS plan payout is distinct from the other employees because ours is now better. We have a grievance which says due to the technical language of our contract we should get more PS than we were. It may or not pay (I don't think it would) at some time much later in the future for an undetermined amount. The question: Do you turn down this TA now with a guaranteed payout of 30.2%, the same PS formula as before, with other improvements in the TA, all for an unknown amount that may in fact never pay off at all in the future.

That's for everyone to decide hopefully.

And in fairness to Phil's clever metaphors (and they are clever) he implied management's fuel hedging and currency trades were "Beanie Baby gambles". I do agree with Phil there.

 

Essentially, you have to believe that the old language would let us capture the other employees' PS, and that a long-shot grievance would have succeeded. Admittedly, the other language was not written for dual PS pools.


While this would be nice it was never going to happen-ever - even if we did win the grievance.

Even if DAL lost the grievance what would stop them from just giving the money back to the non-contracts? If it appeared that DAL was going to provide the Pilots a windfall and actually pay the same amount of total PS before the non-contracts had their PS reduced the company would simply give that money back to the non-contracts.

That is the flexibility of dealing with non-contract employees. If they knew they had to pay it anyway does anyone really think they would reward the Pilots? Especially if the non-contracts were to see their PS reduction go directly into our pockets.

Scoop

 

Good point, Scoop. I just didn't want to get into how unrealistic the payout scenario is. There will always be a conspiracy theory, and always be something of dubious value we clean-up that will be viewed as giving away the farm. There always has to be one for Jerry to float or re-broadcast, otherwise DPA is revealed as making no sense, and legal bills are still due.

Never forget the day we caved on RJ's!

 

Scoop,
That is a a very good point.

 

So will the $762 million Bastian has already lost on fuel hedging come off PTIX and lower our profit sharing?

 

Were not those hedges purchased on RA's watch?