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didn't write this but, interesting reading

Old 09-21-2015, 09:38 AM
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Default didn't write this but, interesting reading

I'm a "No" vote, and here's why:
1. No improvement to protections from scheduling abuses like involuntary base replacement, revisions as the new normal, and substitution gone wild. Normally I would have expected all of this "optimization" immediately after signing a TA like the one we have been presented, but the company has been forced to show us its hand earlier than planned because of the low manning blunder they got themselves into. If we vote this in, we can expect for all of these things to be the new normal.



2. 20% reserve lines to VTO. Does any VTO bidder actually want this? This is clearly the company's idea and a concession. This is trading reserve pilots for VTO pilots. It's covering trips ahead of time using the seniority fight club called VTO bidding. Any increase in VTO bidders is simply a move toward PBS. When we are all VTO bidders, PBS has arrived.



3. 6 week bid month. Apart from the negative implications that seem obvious to everyone except the NC, what really disturbs me is the effort to reassure us with verbal non-contractually binding promises and the similarity in handling this to the 4A2b fiasco. If anyone still remembers, 4A2b was OUR (Union negotiators) idea. And when questions were raised we were reassured that it would "rarely, if ever be implemented", and that if it was, the company would "work with us" on it. We saw how that worked out. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. If we insist on this, and the company spends the money to reprogram the computers to implement it, there should not be a shred of doubt in any pilot's mind what will happen next. The bean counters in the back room will start investigating how best to optimize this new bidding scheme. A snake will always be a snake, and the company will always do everything it can to save money and optimize us. It is simply in their nature. I can easily envision less than 12 bid months in a year, with the possibility of as few as 9 bid months. Any pilot who gains pay from the number of bid periods (instructors who get training pay each bid month, carry over bidders, to name a couple) will feel the effect of this first. Think about what vacation bidding will look like with a 6 week bid month. To write something like this into this TA without any protections whatsoever is a significant oversight at best, and horribly irresponsible at worst.


4. Pay "raises". If you compute the true percentage of these raises over a 9 year period (3 years since our last raise and the 6 years of the contract), it comes out to an annual raise of 2.85%. That's 3 years of zero, then 10,3,3,3,4,3% each of the next 6 years. This is at best a cost of living raise, if one uses the low end of past inflation and the low end of predictions for the coming years, and if you use numbers that exclude food and energy (the two things we all use the most of). This is simply a COLA, and a weak one at that. That means that AT BEST, your buying power will stay the same as it is for the next 6 years. If you think inflation will be higher than 2.85% per year over the next 6 years, your buying power will decrease (you will not be able to buy as much "stuff" each year). To refer to these pay increases as "industry leading" is misleading. It's disingenuous to bargain for and obtain a COLA and then go around trumpeting "industry leading" like you have accomplished some great feat. These are not industry leading pay raises. These are COLA pay raises. On top of that, it's my understanding that the Delta pilots just turned down a TA with rates much higher than our TA rates, so I'm not even convinced the TA rates will be "industry leading" for very long. And by the way, those of you who stay informed will know that the company just raised it's shipping rates AGAIN another 5% or so. In other words, as pointed out by the Block 1 Rep in a recent letter, they just paid for this entire TA, if we vote it in, TEN TIMES OVER with that one price increase (one of 5 in the last 5 years, not including fuel surcharges). Think about that when someone starts telling you how much this TA is worth, and whether we left any money on the table or not.


5. No "A" plan improvement. It's been hard to find out the exact date the A plan was implemented for us, but let's just consider what has happened the last 20 years, since most of the pilots thinking about retiring now have been on the property that long. $130,000 in 1994 dollars now has (at the end of 2014) the buying power of about $79,000, due to inflation (using actual historical inflation values). That annuity has lost about 40% of its value to us over the last 20 years. If a pilot retires at the end of this year and lives another 20 years, and inflation continues at the same rate (two big IF's), the buying power will have diminished to about $31,000. Make no mistake, the company is already getting rid of the A plan. They are inflating it away.


6. Back room deals. Not again! Really? Just when we thought our sordid history regarding "parking lot meetings" and back room deals was a thing of the past, there are strong indications that once again, there was a private meeting between both lead negotiators and the mediator to finalize this deal. The Block 1 Rep indicated that the MEC was "ambushed" with this deal. If proper communication and negotiating is occurring, there should not be any "ambushing" going on. I was hopeful this time that anybody we put on the NC would have the moral fortitude and historical awareness to not allow themselves to be compromised in this way. If this indeed happened, shame on the "yes" voters on the MEC for not seeing this for what it was and calling for a stop to it.


Some will accuse the "no" voters of being greedy. I am willing to forego the "shiny nickel" sitting in front of me for a year or two to gain mostly quality of life protections, so that we are all not working under concessionary work rules brought to us lately by a creative CRS department, and our own NC in this TA. I personally would be fine with a TA that has true COLA raises, at least a head nod of some kind to the A plan, and some real protections from CRS and the antics they have been pulling lately (and my own NC with its 6 week bid period idea). Those I have talked to who are planning on voting yes seem to be motivated by two things: the shiny nickel they see laying in front of them, and the "lets just get this thing over with" crowd. They seem willing to endure just about anything CRS may come up with over the next 6 years as long as they can have that nickel (financial greed) or "get this over with" (psychological greed). They seem way too eager to parrot the NC line about any A plan improvement costing too much, without at least questioning that conclusion and doing a little research on their own, and some of them are even willing to believe some non-sense about the Union being "out of money", whatever that means. In other words, they are focusing most intently on the shiny nickel and the end of negotiations and not thinking clearly about any of the other issues in play. I'm not saying all "yes" pilots are greedy and none of the "no" pilots are not, but I am saying that those complaining the loudest about greed may be the ones most guilty of harboring it. "






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Old 09-21-2015, 09:55 AM
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Great post!!!
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Old 09-21-2015, 10:01 AM
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Who did write the post?
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