Quote:
Originally Posted by 3EngineTaxi
In my opinion, the settlement and LOAs were a pragmatic surrender. I was disappointed at how weak the remedy was, as an additional 4 flows/month is not enough. The pattern of the company violating the contract continues.
Everyone junior to a flowing pilot will benefit from slightly accelerated flow and moving up in seniority and less stagnation (This helps even junior lifers, but not the senior lifers).
I know pilots who have waited over a year from captain award to receiving captain pay, due to no fault of their own. They were at the mercy of the company. I am glad this was remedied for the new guys so they will have it better than those before them.
There is a lot of bickering on this forum. It's great to be angry, but we need pilot unity. THE UNION IS ONLY AS STRONG AS ITS MEMBERS. If you are angry or want to make things better in the future, PLEASE GET INVOLVED. Attend union meetings. Vote in ALL UNION ELECTIONS, no matter how minor you think they are. Instead of whining about the guys who have "one foot out the door," get involved and run in the next election for your local LEC status rep position (once you are off probation). Start a recall of your reps if you think you can do it better. Contact your reps and direct them to recall the negotiating committee. Volunteer for the Strategic Planning Committee. Volunteer for the negotiating committee. The union especially needs junior pilots who will likely be around for the next 3-10 years.
I would love to see all this bickering and anger redirected into productive union activity.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm not sure people realize the non pragmatic way would have resulted in a full arbitration that would have stretched out 12-18 months with no guarantee of a better outcome. It's entirely possible that the the metering would have been ruled favorably to the company and we lose whatever leverage we had to increase flow numbers over the next 18-24 months.
Instead,
-current FOs get CA pay at award now which could be anywhere from 3-6 months of much better pay
-positive space commutes and paid hotels for 3 months which would cover a good chunk of the time you're in LGA until you could hold ORD/MIA/DFW which any base can be held within a year on the 145 currently
-FOs that get displaced off trips for time building after monthly bidding is done have no reassignment responsibility. The pilots between 800-950 hours lose out but the guys below 800 hours will still get to play the reserve bidding game
-everyone beyond the protected pilots get 3-6 months shaved off their flow date since 4/month and 22 additional settlement slots adds up to quite a bit over a two year period
-50 hours of required CA IOE will lead to needing more LCAs which will also make the position much more junior since increased flow will wipe out most of our current LCAs sooner since the vast majority of them are protected pilots. This will increase pilots pay due to the override or build up resumes if someone wants to get hired somewhere else
Those are all pretty descent gets for a relatively narrow grievance in exchange for creating a pathway for DECs that won't cause another round of cascading grievances and pushing guys from 800 hours over the 950 hour mark. That current practice of bidding FO reserve might be fleeting once the staffing surplus on FOs causes guys to fly more on reserve anyway
I'm all for increasing CA pay scales and pushing some reserve rule reform but this probably wasn't the place to make those gains. Market conditions and tighter pilot staffing over the next couple of years will dictate that better than this grievance settlement.
12-14-2021