This post makes absolutely no sense! You really don't know what you are talking about!

 

It’s almost like a 13 year old is using dad’s login.

The variable plan the union has been advocating (and wasting tons of our dues money on consultants) is an incredibly complex plan. How many companies have this plan? It requires the company to outlay a significant sum of money to stabilize the fund to be able to deal with downturns in the market. Again, incredibly complex. If you were around during the hard sell of this plan, you might have seen a video where they compared years of service as pancakes. Thus, the term pancake plan.

If you’d ever read something before spouting off, you might have noticed that I have said that I’d support other tried and true methods to increase our pension benefit. Flat dollar, higher B fund, increases to FAE or multiplier on our current A fund.

You’re right, I do really like our A fund. There’s nothing like renewing streams of income when you aren’t working. However, the amount just needs to be increased. It’s not a complex to change $260,000 to a higher amount or 2%/year to a higher percentage.

 

Who are you going to ask to negotiate those increases to the current FAE A plan? The same individuals and organization who you dont trust to negotiate a differently calculated plan?

 

Do you realize that our management is no longer on an FAE formula and is now on a Flat Dollar Formula? Are they idiots for changing formulas or did they realize to get an increase they needed to look at a different formula due to regulation changes since the inception of the FAE formula?

Hey, why dont you four step up and negotiate this thing for us since you know whats best. You seem to be certified professionals who deal with pensions on a daily basis. Just run in their for us and make demands and get it done.

I will trust the professionals who ALPA hired. I went to the hub turn meetings and listened to the consultants and I think I will trust them over a couple know it all pilots. Next thing you know we will be getting medical and legal advice from pilots. Oh wait thats already happening haha. Unbelievable how this job makes people think they are the professionals of everything.

 

If you think that the managers chose to be in a flat dollar formula or that a flat dollar formula is more lucrative, you really are showing your ignorance and lack of historical knowledge.

 

They added a B plan also which increased the total retirement package. I know 2 peeps who are on it and it was an increase in total retirement benefits. They also got an increased bonus structure. Thats my whole point to “we can get a bigger retirement pie with a new formula and bigger B”. It doesent have to be “the same formula or nothing”.

 

Of course you do

 

I hope the company doesn’t realize that all it takes is a little “intransigence” to scare us away from pension improvements. If they apply that intransigence to other areas of negotiations we may never get a pay raise again.

As for PBGC/ERISA issues, I would be surprised if our stabilized plan would be covered, and if it is our insurance premiums would be very high. Our notional shares are invested in instruments that are advertised to mimic stock market returns. How do you get that with any asset mix other than stocks? PBGC/ERISA requires risk analysis to match retiree liabilities with funding requirements. If we are heavy duty stocks in the plan, there’s no way they would insure that without gobs of cash in reserve in the trust Because of the risk. Dividends on stocks would not pay nearly enough for yearly retiree income requirements, so do the equities that make up our notional investments have to be liquidated to pay us in retirement? If so this thing is a mess and a lawsuit waiting to happen. If there is more to it, it would be nice to see because the secret pancake investment mix has not been disclosed to my knowledge.

The idea of a self funding pension based on stocks is straight snake oil and we will be the laughing stock of the industry if we give away our A fund for this garbage.

We need negotiators fighting for improvements on our existing A plan and coordinating that fight with the membership, not day traders who think the stock market can save us from a fight while telling us we’re not smart enough to understand how great this magic plan is or how smart they are.

 

per the ALPA “education material” I have seen and company disclosures:

1.) The new plan is covered by the PBGC and is ERISA compliant. Its already been approved and is being used by others currently.

2.) Our new plan would be invested like our current plan and our current plan (per companies last earnings call) has done very well over its life with returns. Take a look at the transcripts. They even threw out a number for how well it had done this past year. This is the reason they stated they do not anticipate and further funding needed for the next 2 years. With these gains we got nothing as the ALPA education material stated. The money is in a trust. These trust are not invested in “stocks” and therefore are not “snake oil”.

Lets deal in facts in this debate otherwise its all conjecture. Im just using company data and data from ALPA education material.

Once again, I think I’m like many of our pilots, im open to all ideas but, if we throw around inaccurate information we cant even have an educated debate.

 

1 - other companies that use this are completely different. Please provide one that is the same as ours, because it has been demonstrated that the companies used in the kiron sales job were totally different and not accurate for comparison. They are mostly investment components that are part of cash balance plans that allows the beneficiary to take a little more risk in part of their Plan. I would say that it bordered on malfeasance to use those examples. Where did you find the PBGC approval of our plan specifically? If you cannot produce this I would say that you are the one throwing around inaccurate information.

2 - there’s no way a new plan has access to the vehicles our current one has as listed in the 5500. we have access to a lot of institutional and private instruments because of our trusts’s size and history. Starting a new one with 5k participants will not be the same thing at all. The Alpa website seems to have removed all VB/stab plan info, so can you show me where the investment mix is in the plan’s underlying funds? If not I would say you are peddling misinformation.

2a - if you are telling me that we are in fact just going to invest in the same things as our current A plan, then you are admitting we can’t negotiate our way out of a paper bag. If our A plan is overly funded with ease by the company and it is performing exceptionally well, we should be able to negotiate improvements within the current structure with no problems. Especially with our pilots forced to stay in govt group quarantine facilities throughout the world. Our weakness in demanding pension improvements is maddening.

I disagree with your sign off because it does not sound like you are open to demanding improvements in the current plan by using all bargaining tactics allowable by law, only that you are interesting in having us be a retirement guinea pig and anyone that doesn’t follow this plan doesn’t understand economics.