t/a passed
 

reporting on chitchat

Just got the email.. 82% pass rate

Dear Fellow Pilots,

This morning we voted by a margin of 82%, strongly ratifying Contract 2015, a record in Delta contract history. These results speak for themselves but the path to this achievement was no accident. This agreement is a product of your direct involvement and a culmination of our collective efforts over the last 18 months since the rejected TA.

When I assumed office in September 2015, we went “back to basics” and committed to a more transparent union. You were provided with open communications throughout the process starting with the complete re-engagement proposal to the final TA language. This change in approach to negotiations facilitated your crucial participation which I believe was the basis of our collective success.

In 2015, the Delta pilots rejected an agreement, sending a message to management and our union that they both missed the mark. By rejecting that agreement and now ratifying this agreement, you have validated what I have always known: we know when to say “no” and when to say “yes.”

The ratification of this new contract ensures Delta pilots remain among the very top of airline pilot wages earners and recognizes the value we bring to the recent unprecented success of Delta Air Lines. Working in concert with our fellow employees, we have helped establish Delta as the premium brand for air travel. In this highly successful and dynamic environment, I foresee opportunities to add more value for our pilots in the near future.

Your ALPA representatives will now turn their attention from obtaining a strongly ratified tentative agreement to ensuring this agreement is implemented within the parameters of the agreed upon schedule. The Negotiating Committee is producing a Notepad that will discuss the portions of the contract that have effective dates other than December 1, 2016. Retro checks are scheduled to be distributed to you on December 16.

As union members, we bear the responsibility of casting an informed vote. Thank you to all who took the time to review the MEC-provided materials. I also want to thank the elected representatives for their leadership during the difficult final stages of these negotiations.

The currency our Negotiators trade in is pilot unity. Thank you for providing that currency and your support of ALPA throughout this process.

Fraternally,
Captain John Malone Delta MEC Chairman

damn, I wish I could see that dumpster fire.

Boy Howdee.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/agft3o5863...giphy.gif?dl=1

15/19 = 79%

Looks like the MEC got it right. As close as they could have at least.

I read thru that letter twice and still didn't see the words "industry leading." Hmm...

I read thru it three times, and it said 82% of the pilots voted in favor.

Yup, lack of faith and money win the day. Congrats

Have to agree. Most I fly with didn't see ALPA being able to ever get out from under the poor choice of an opener, followed by the "focus plus" weakness. Resigned to suck up some concessions and loss of widebody jobs to at least get some money now and hopefully, "get 'em next time!"

Your theory. Mine...pilots saw it as a good deal.

If the rejection of the last deal was "good judgement", what makes you think this wasn't?

I'm not so sure its a "loss of wide body jobs" though.

Set aside the effects of VB for now (since we can and should immediately pull it down IMO) and the only part you can really point to is 48.5 going to 46.5. But that's not really a concession when you look at it in totality.

The current 48.5 is based off an asinine 4 year period. For most of that, they can go as low as they want with no limits to how low, as long as they hit 48.5 once. The current one still keeps the 48.5, but allows 46.5 on a hard yearly basis if 650K GHB's are protected, which is a lot more than would be protected even if the 48.5 JV ESK balance maintained.

It doesn't take a lot of math to see how a hard 46.5, even if perfectly maintained as a ceiling (which I don't think they can even do nor will they even try) will yield a greater balance in the TAJV than a no floor/no floor/no floor/48.5 would.

If their goal is to go as low as possible for one year and then catch back up, the TA provision would I guess allow that. But even then the job loss estimate would only be for a year. If the goal is to do as little flying with our pilots as possible on an ongoing basis, then the TA provision actually protects us far more even in the TAJV.

That said, either the previous or current language can be rendered almost meaningless by significant changes to equipment, so in that case both are equally lacking.

That's easy, it's called hypocrisy.

The pilots clearly, in overwhelming and unprecedented numbers, saw the value of this agreement. Too bad 4 reps didn't.

Great job Malone, Uvena, most of the MEC, and the Delta pilots.

...gonna be quite hard to get em next time when you have a number bigger than 80. That number is gonna smack us "the next time around"

I think almost everyone just saw this as a very good deal with very little downside. Thanks to Malone for his leadership and everyone involved for the serious amount of time spent away from home working to make the lives of their fellow pilots better.

thanks....

Was there a pay increase? If so, how much?

That's a bit overly simplistic. Perhaps some did see it that way.

For me, this was the outcome that I expected with the no vote last year. The money and QOL items were in the zone of reasonableness with no deal killing concessions. I also did not see any really productive path from a no. A change of CBA would be a complete failure, and I doubted we'd see anything actually come to fruition probably until 2020 with little upside. Most people I've spoken to saw it in a similar light.

Ya'll didn't expect us to believe Delta pilots would vote down two TAs in a row? :D

Ie., the TA was so reasonable that they didn't have to attatch conditional aircraft orders to it. :)

Because the second time around it took close to a year and a half to get FOCUS PLUS, most of the guys I have spoken to did not want to wait another year and a half for FOCUS ++.
they want the money now and the typical "we will get them next time!" most lost faith in DALPA being able to do much better the third time around!
82% is a huge number, I hope DALPA/company do not take it the wrong way, because 82% are not happy with how this went down.

Enjoy the retro, time will tell how the rest of it plays out!

I have yet to hear anyone say 'we'll get 'em next time' except the clown factory on CC..... and you. Most people I talk to are pretty happy overall.

And I figure this contract added about $450k to my retirement, so thanks, I will enjoy it.

As a newbie, Im pretty happy about this. I know it's not perfect, but Im glad as a group the last TA was rejected in favor of this agreement; which is clearly better. Well done ladies and gentlemen!!

And the rocket surgeons had a banquet to celebrate. And much ale was consumed -- provided by the ewoks. And the toast that was heard throughout the forest went something like, "Whatever happened with that PEB?"

The end.

No. No TA ever comes with a pay increase.

Really? Have you already forgotten the 66% rejection of the first TA? The company will think long and hard about trying another 50.1 + TA.

You could just as easily say the lesson here is how much more the company had to cough up to correct for their initial insulting offer.

Hard to tell the long term affects of this deal but I think the "Market" for Pilots will play a much more important role in the next TA then a look back to the 82% approval.

Scoop

Not sure by what you mean about "as long as they hit 48.5 once". The way it is set up now (the settlement), the company has to maintain a minimum of 48.5% of EASKs every year. Since 2010 the company has not been in compliance once.

Furthermore, the language states the new "minimum" is an AVERAGE of 46.5%. This means we went from a minimum of 48.5% to an Average of 46.5%.

We can throw out numbers all day long; essentially, the company was out of compliance for 6 years and we just gifted them into compliance.

With this new contract we are:

- Allowing the company to do less Atlantic flying than they are currently doing.

- If the company goes below 48.5% EASK then it triggers a global protection that is contractually 5% less International flying than we are doing today.

If the company flat out did not respect our "Floor" over the Atlantic, why would they respect our new global "Floor"?

I would have more faith in the Block hour floor if we would of added Non-Compliance language. Unfortunately, DALPA didn't learn their lesson from 6 years of the company breaking our contract.

How the Scope section is being labeled a win in beyond me. It clearly allows the company to fly fewer international flights.

82% are not happy?

Is that something you can prove?

I take it as exactly the opposite: 82% liked the deal.
"Like" is closer to "happy" than "not happy" (your term).

I think what he is saying is that although 82% voted in favor, it doesn't mean that all yes voters are "happy" with the way everything "shook" out.

Yep! They are talking past each other.

30.2% over the life of the agreement.

Spot on.......

Some of us thought they were smoking crack with the new opener and many people did not think they were serious. Especially outside the industry. But it was a relatively good strategy in the end because it did drive the end result higher somewhat.

TA2 fixed a lot of the problems with TA1 and added about 5% more compared to TA1 and another one in January 1, 2019.

That being said I like this TA better.

I agree that we should have devastating non compliance language built in. I don't agree that the ridiculous selling of the grievance was adequate, nor was it proper. Going forward, we need to seek injunctive relief to force the pull down of whatever amount of code share is necessary to get back into compliance. That disgusting A340 a day into MSP would be a good start. AF can do it, but it won't get a single pax of feed. That and one more would get us into compliance, or they can let us do it. Either way, not our problem. I agree we need to play hardball in that.

I still like yearly periods more than the 4 year period including a one year "cure period". I'd rather be guaranteed 46.5 as an absolute floor (and statistically it will be higher than that anyway) every year than to allow them to be in compliance with 48.5 for a little bit (couple years max) and then back down way lower than 46.5 for a few years only to touch 48.5 once, etc. Yes, its an average, but its only a 2 year window for that average, versus a 4 year window that only requires touching 48.5 one year to be in compliance after 3 years of potentially zero. If they theoretically did zero now, they'd have to go a lot higher than 46.5 the next year wouldn't they?

Believe me, I'm disappointed in our "half" and how its defined, etc. IMO we need both a hard deck 50% ESK and BH any JV. Any one metric can go below that within a reasonable window, but if it does, the following year it must go above 50% by the same amount. Any violation is subject to injunctive relief as well as specified penalties, like pulling lots of seats out of their precious RJ's, etc. That's what we should work towards.

Short Call pay
 

Sooo, do I get the one hour of pay for SC today? I read the NN and I didn't see anything in there.

We didn't gift them anything, our previous MEC Chairman was so certain we would vote yes on POSTA15#1, (can't remember what we call it these days) that he worked out a deal with management for $30 Million with no changes to the language because the TA he knew would be ratified, reset everything and would bring the company back into compliance. Unfortunately, the grievance settlement didn't require ratification. Just a slight oversight by MD and we were going to have to wait four more years before revisiting the weak stick JV language and grieve it again.

I think our union was kind of neutered by the sloppy handling of the first TA wrt the JV grievance because of their assumption that we were all willing to eat that $hit sandwich and the problem would be forever corrected in the company's favor.

Now, having said that, I'd love to see better language. Watching AF/KLM, and all of the other foreign airlines slam all of our cities with their heavies while we serve maybe one or two cities in each of their respective countries, sometimes none, makes me ill. Open skies favors every other airline much more than it favors us...in my opinion any way. But if we think we can force Delta to operate flights to destinations they don't want to serve, we are kidding ourselves. We had furlough language in our C2K contract that we all thought protected everyone on the list, until it didn't.

I don't really know what the right answer is. I'm not saying this language is better than the previous language, but I did think having to wait 4 years to grieve their non-compliance was rediculous. I do think code shares and JV's are here to stay. I like the year to year review so we can address noncompliance sooner than our previous language. I just don't know how we can truly enforce a scope clause that forces the company to do flying they don't want to do or can't do profitably. And if you think having highly punitive penalties attached to our scope clause, Management would never agree to a contract with language like that. Just like they'd never agree to 10% raises annually after the contract becomes amendable as an incentive for them to work with us on a new contract.

Fire away, in my defense, I've had a little wine tonight.

There is a table below and it shows suit up pay and credit will go into effect no later than 1-1-17, so probably then and not sooner I'm sure with the wording. It's section 4 H. 3.

If you exceed guarantee. 1 hour pay and credit towards guarantee for unused short calls.

Do us all a favor and retire tomorrow....

This is where I feel we failed in allowing the negotiation to be framed as a comparison to TA1, which was soundly defeated by the pilot group, vice what we actually desired. We had an opportunity to drastically reframe the debate citing the first ever down vote coupled with pretty dramatic union turnover but instead went for the easier route of "focus plus." We never even broached retirement or medical, even as a potential give aways for other gains. I feel a significant amount of the yes vote was with very serious misgivings, with fear of never getting anything better given our recent TA counters history.