Cost of living/inflation to our pay.....
 

I've crunched some numbers about our lack of pay increases for inflation and here are the results.

Assumptions:

Starting with 2yr Captain pay from Oct2001
Assumes no upgrade to check airman
Assumes nomral longevity raises
Average of 85 hours per month
Assumes no vacation/PTO/UTO
Does not include profit sharing, 401K matching, CSPP increasings
Assume pay raise occurs on 1Jan every year based on previous year inflation
Does not include perdiem or perdiem increases
No cost of living raise 1Jan02 as pay scale was started only 3 months prior
Does not include any check airman 10percent override



Using the inflation rate below from http://inflationdata.com

2003 1.59%
2004 2.27%
2005 2.68% so far this year
2006 3.25% best guess

Here is what I get


Year 2003 2004 2005 2006
Current pay (monthly) $10685 $10921 $11164 $11268
pay adj for Inflation $10855 $11346 $11910 $12411

Annual pay lost due to
no cost of living raise $2039 $5106 $8949 $13721


The net result is that by the end of 2006 this typical Capt has lost $29,815.56! An FO starting at year one with no upgrades would have lost $16,689.89, and that ain't chump change either! The total inflation rate from Oct01 thru Apr05 is 9.51% That means we have already lost 10% of our buying power due to inflation! How far will this go? In 5 more years it will be well over a 20% loss in buying power! The total income lost after 10 years is staggering due to compounding! That means that the employees (us) are paying for jetBlue's growth, yet we get nothing in return! No stock, no additional pay, not even a promise to fix it! Not once have they said "You can expect a raise if we get XXX profit margin." I think (as well as others) is that JB is building the company on the back of the employee. Then consdier that these loses don't even include the 401K matching and CSPP that add additional monies lost! It is even larger if you work 90-95 hours per month. I am ignoring profit sharing as it is not a sure thing. It won't be long until compounding raises the annual pay lost due to inflation is many time the size of our annual profit sharing (which by the way goes into your 401K and you can't use it to pay the bills, which keep going up!)

The format of this posting doesn't do justice to the spreadsheet that really make the problem show. I hope this makes sense to everyone. We need to really push this in the upcoming survey and really express our dissatisfaction. Good luck to us all.

Just my opinion....

FNG

ps. I have made some updates to the numbers (error corrections) and will try to attached the file soon. thx

FNG,

Are you able to post the spreadsheet? Under USER CP I thought there was a WYSIWYG tag and photo tag.

This would be a valuable chart to actually visualize.

Very sad, very sad indeed.

It’s going to take more than a 3% yearly raise to keep up with this inflation. Lets start at 7%.

16 year thread revival. Bravo sir!

It’s going to take more than 7%, 5+ years down the road when we finally sign a new contract!

The 2% was one of my biggest gripes about this last contract. Needs a minimum of 3-3.5% every year that never ends, just so the company can’t drag its feet on a new contract.

Haven’t the last 2 months been greater than 5%?

Inflation numbers out today. Over 5%. Your paychecks are worse less every month.

Inflation numbers out today. Over 5%. Your paychecks are worse less every month.

I assume you mean worth rather than worse. But yeah, with these numbers, and the federal government quite literally looking at TRILLIONS of dollars in deficit spending, the only way to protect the value of a multi year CBA is to base it on an inflation offset - like the CPI. It’s what social security and military pensions do.

With inflation of 5% per year and a contract not amendable for five years - and frequently dragged out to eight by management - you lose way too much real value between contracts. And that’s not referring just to JB personnel, that’s all airline pilots.

Only thing we can do is use funds to hedge against inflation ourselves. Buy gold/silver/real estate etc. I am not a financial expert and this is not advice


thankfully, we have some things management needs so they will probably not want to drag it out too much (EWR co base). It is critical to have actual inflation yearly increases in next contract.

The CPI is bogus, and the real numbers are much higher. Look at Shadow Government Statistics - Home Page for an example.

They essentially formulate the CPI to hide the real inflation numbers because of everything that is tied to the CPI. Social Security for example....

But yeah, whatever the CPI is, real inflation numbers are probably double that, at least. Maybe more...

Yeah, one can quibble about the appropriate metric, but NO inflation offset GUARANTEES that every year you lose value.

Just curious, what do you mean by that? Ewr isn't a co-base, and won't be.

The company may try to negotiate to make it a co base. That would require big gains for pilots in other areas,

I don’t see it……. They have already agreed to make it a stand alone base and the CBA prohibits it from
being a co-base.

True, the CBA prohibits it. And we will be renegotiating the CBA.

Hence why I said the pilots have things the company wants…and co base can be used as a bargaining chip for, say, better inflation protection in wages.

not worth it IMHO.

So an easier commute/better trip selection is worth a 7% pay cut every year?

Speaking of which I sure hope both of you have filled out the NC survey!

Did it the day it came out!

I said that I’d accept a 2% raise in 2022 and six months of furlough protection in exchange for Skywest getting to fly our 190s.

Because apparently that’s how we negotiate for raises these days. Scope giveaways.

Well perhaps because of that paltry and embarrassing offer and the subsequent rejection by the pilot group they realize it behooves them to actually survey the group instead of just guessing, and guessing wrong. Fill out the survey people or we risk a similar boneheaded screwup!

short answer….. no.

IMHO, you are minimizing the downside risk.

1) how would reserves work? The $100+ dollar Uber from Kew is a killer. This has been a complete dumpster fire for the FA’s.

2) a 7% pay raise isn’t sustainable. Even if you tie the raise to government figures, we are at about 5% inflation y/y. The big gains will be with the initial contract pay rates.

3) keeping it as a separate base allows more vacation weeks (read: more senior vacation weeks).

4) keeping EWR as a separate base will do wonders for seniority (more senior folks at each base getting more days off, better trips etc.). This seniority bump is likely a 5-10% pay bump (plus QOL bump) however, the size of the bump is directly related to your relative seniority.

not saying your ideas are wrong, but it seems silly to give up a large pay bump, a large seniority bump for a proposed 7% raise. I agree the 2% annual raise is unacceptable in this high inflation environment. I would look for a separate EWR base and a 5% annual raise or an annual raise that mirrors government inflation figures.