RedeyeAV8r

That my friend would be illegal. Thank our brethern from AMR several years ago. That little rucous and the Case law history steming from it, changed all our ability and strategy to fight for improvements under the RLA forever.

ewrbasedpilot

God forbid you'd have some job protection with a union.....................
Are you a newhire?

mike734

The public won't care until they miss their vacation connection, wedding, meeting, reunion, etc. We need the right to strike in a reasonable time frame. We need to amend the RLA!

skywatch

Hey, I have a question - I always see people complaining that they are not being paid for anything but flight time...has any union ever tried negotiating something else? A yearly salary? An hourly rate for duty time rather than flight time? I mean, otherwise, what the heck do you expect? You get what you negotiate, right?...

RedeyeAV8r

You mean like being paid by "RIGS" verses simply by the Block hour?

Yes Sky watch it already has been done.

Trip Rig: pays the pilot a Minimum gaurantee for Time away from Base (TAFB)
1 hour of pay for every 4 hours awayis an example.
Duty RIG: Pays a Pilot a ratio for the time he/she is on duty 1 for 2.5 is an example. 1 hour of pay for every 2.5 hours on duty.
Min Rig: a gauranteed minimum pay for a given duty period. 2 hours minumum pay when a pilot checks in for duty is an example.

Most ALPA legacy carriers all had pretty good Rigs (otherwise known as "Work rules).
AMR and SWA and UPS have similar rules.
Unfortunatley Post 9/11 bankruptcy courts have done away with most if not all the good work rules.

fireman0174

Perhaps an explanation for the need to have duty rigs is worthwhile.

They came about because the airlines don’t care whether the pilots spent all of their time off away from home. They really could care less. To them, “increased productivity” was being able to get the maximum number of flight hours out of a pilot in a month, and if the pilot only got two or three actual days off at home, who cares?

Schedules could be fly an hour or two, layover, fly the next day for a short period, etc, etc. This results in very few actual days off at home.

So duty rigs came about to literally force the company to fly you, i.e., if the company is going to pay you while you are not actually flying, there is a clear financial incentive for them to get you on an airplane working.

An example was explained to me many years ago. This flight crew from Capital Airlines (merged in UAL in the early 1960s?) had a layover in MSP shortly after a time away from home duty rig was adopted. The company was just going to leave them in a hotel until they were needed. After several days (a week as I recall), because of the newly adopted time away from home duty rig, they “max’d out” on time for the month.

Bingo, they called crew scheduling (back then there was crew scheduling at most airports) and told them they were finished for the month and wanted to go home. The local crew schedulers had not been advised of the new duty rig and were quite willing to leave the crew at the hotel. Instead, they had to deadhead the crew home for a few days off AT HOME instead of the layover hotel.

Duty rigs “force” the company to work you since you are going to get paid anyway.

IMO, the most important duty rig is the time away from home duty rig.

Oldfreightdawg

Poor choice of words on my part. Never mind. My point is we need to do more than yell across the table at management. Support form the public and Washington is paramount in this regard. ALPA is not wasting dues money on public campaigns. What I don't like is the "feel sorry for me" angle in the USA Today ad.

IronWalt

ALPA equals Morons leading Morons down the path to diminished returns. And I am happy to say that ALPA will be OFF THE PROPERTY at USAirways soon.

FEL1011

I have worked with large union, in-house union and no union airlines. The biggest problem is that the airline unions in the US are "Labor" unions and not "Trade" unions. We are professionals practicing a trade or craft.

A trade union would mentor and train new members, promote its craft, self police, and protect the public image of said professionals. What is the American Medical Association? What about the State Bar Associations? American Dental Association? What about the so-called blue collar trade unions?

Maybe we lost our way?

flaps 9

Sound of crying Whaaaaaaa, Whaaaaaaa, Whaaaaaa