Short bus 5 and thier minions screamed company was manipulating SAM to get to 4a2c. I guess we値l find out.

 

Don't be obtuse. Marty H has all but said the SAM was being blatantly manipulated.

 

But where in the contract does it say they can't do that? We don't have staffing levels in our CBA, so did they "manipulate" them, or change them. Yea they did. But not in a way that violated the CBA, at least not where anyone has said "CBA Section X.x.X.x" was violated. Marty even said, they lowered the amount of Reserves and increased the amount of line pilots, which brings the hours down. If that wasn't allowed, I think they would have stated that in the grievance itself.

 

I think he was right. But getting rid of 4a2c will turn the company痴 cards over.

 

No one is being obtuse. It's clear as day what was happening. But it was also (possibly) in accordance with the CBA. To turn things around, as pilots we "manipulate" our schedules all the time. We add trips, drop trips, deviate from the scheduled deadhead, move R-days, etc...all the things allowed by the CBA. Why do we do these things? To make our schedule "better" (which often means more efficient = more pay for less work). The company can do this too. Better for them means the required freight gets moved at minimal cost. Clearly one way (which may or may not have been in accordance with the CBA) is to alter (reduce) the number of reserves, and push more pilots to the line. In this way they are paying fewer pilots to sit around on reserve. Does it save them money? I don't know. Is it in accordance with the CBA? It's complicated. I'm not aware of any section that says they must have X number of reserve lines...if you know where that section is you need to bring it to the unions attention.

Did you read grievance 25-01? If not you should. Had it gone to arbitration I think it's very likely that the company lawyers would have been able to make a good argument that they were just responding to business conditions. As the ALPA lead attorney for this grievance said on a recent podcast it's very difficult to predict how the hearing goes. Do you want to gamble that the judge rules against us, and then 4a2b/c remains in the contract, and the company sees it as a useful tool to manipulate our pay? Not sure I'd be thrilled about that gamble.

 

I didn't say that it wasn't 'legal' per the CBA. I was responding to the implication by HH that folks stating that SAM was being manipulated were being alarmist.

I'm told (but have done no research myself) that on some properties when CBA language is changed, the changes include a paragraph or statement on intent that BOTH sides agree to. That way when company lawyers get cute with definitions of words to suit their agenda, said agreed upon intent can be used to stop it or to bolster a grievance. No idea if true, if it works, or if we could do that. But worth looking into....and if feasible asking why we haven't done it in the past???

 

Agree to disagree.

 

I wasn't here when it happened, but I think this was the case with the "lie-flat seats" in CBA 2015. We had some intent language that we thought was really great, and we got beat over the head with it. Maybe someone who knows the details can chime in. You can find places in our contract that have "intent" language...one of which I'm aware is the section on sliding vacation days...section 7.G.1 has "Intent: A vacation period slides as a whole." So we do have this. The pitfall w.r.t. 4a2b/c is the complexity associated with the section. It seems to me that anything you do here is going to have loopholes that the lawyers can find their way into. Thus the best solution is to not have it at all, so that 68/85 is THE min BLG.

 

Thanks Sled...good info...I see that one. I also searched 'intent' in the CBA to find a few others. Seems like far too few of them exist...IF "intent" paragraphs work. No idea if they do work, or if they are enforceable in grievances. Seems like if we paid some large organization vast sums of money, they could help us incorporate best practices from other properties into our CBA.

FWIW, I agree that everything about 4.A.2.X in practice was rife with loopholes, despite the good intentions previous NCs/MECs may have had.

 

No need to wait, just look at the November bid packs. It doesn't count towards 4a2bc, yet they were still buying up lines to 76 hours. Some pilots were getting 15+ hours of buy up before we exited 4a2bc. This, while they were constrained by the limit on carryover and CIC hours. The company could have easily increased their reserves and had average BLG in the 86-90 hour range and argued that the business demands of peak require different manning models than the rest of the year. That was the intent of excluding those months from the SAM for a 4a2bc exit.