I'm teasing sailing, I'm teasing. I'm so teasing. Don't yell at me...

FWIW, I 100% get your point. I think the fear is how do you prevent the perverbial camel getting his nose in the tent again? I guess, hard pill to swallow for many, but you let your reps do the job you elected them to do.

I once worked for an imigrant who came to the U.S. young, dropped out in the sixth grade and washed cars for money. Forty years later, and this of course was pre 2008, he was worth over half a billion or so, all from selling cars well. Now, yall hear me out, his motto basically was everything is for sale. The question is, what are you willing to pay? Now obviously the kids aren't for sale, but the dream home he just built and is about to move into, if you make an offer he'll sell it to you but its going to be the price he paid plus the price to seperate himself from it, i.e. a high price. If you're going to be successful, you carry that attitude.

Scope isn't for sale, but Sailings example is logical. There is a lot of wheeling and dealing evidently out there and if the MEC fails to have an adequate floor or makes a mistake then they won't be in the MEC anymore. As ACL said, stay informed, stuff is happening.

 

The problem FTB, is everyone's price is different. How does the union determine whose price is the right one?

 

My price is pretty high. My price is something along the lines that I still get paid if I'm furloughed. Then they can outsource the entire airline for all I care.

 

I'd say one that increases the number of airframes and pilots at mainline and decreases the number of airframes and pilots at DCI and triggers to say that if the balances shifts back towards outsourced flying then the penalties are outrageous. Not to unlike what Hockey just said.

I'm not saying this is fun putting my life (read career) in the hands of someone else who I've never met and who other people have a lot of oppinions about and not always great, but they are more versed in these matters and they are tasked with representing us and our interests and they were elected by people who have been here longer than I. If they screw up, there will be hell to pay. If they sell out junior pilots like you and I Satch, folks that are not junior like Tsquare, Carl, Ferd, to name but a few, will go mideval. I can picture Ferd playing William Wallace in the parking lot off of Virginia Ave.

But I don't know what they know and every time I talk to someone that does, i.e. fly with someone who is in charge of a committee or what have you, the more I learn and the more I'm willing to trust. You can say I've been beaten into weary eyed submission.

They're making sausage, yes, but there aren't too many entirely better ways to do it.

Time to go work out.

 

My simple rule is would it benefit the pilot group as a whole. Does it make sense for the pilot group and can the proper protections be built in. Any changes in scope would also have to be independent of pay. That policy has pretty much been established in the last few contract negotiations where we set the pay rates before we tackled scope. Trading pay for jobs is a slippery slope we don't want to go down.
In a major contract change like this one could be, it should to to memory ratification. The pilot group as a whole will decide what their price is. Personally I believe are minimum opening position in Contract 2012 should be the return of all flying in E170 or larger aircraft to the mainline. It will take time and effort but scope has been improved in contracts since I have been on the property. It can be improved again.

 

According to Mr. Leach, who sent a email recently to all Compass employees. TSA holdings plans on growing Compass by putting our services out to ALL carriers. Not sure Delta thought this through. It appears Compass could be used to provide the E175's to the competition, grow in size and continue the downward spiral of scope erosion. The pilots of Compass are against growing this airline at the expense of better paying mainline jobs. Now it appears management will continue to increase the size of larger RJ's, whether at Delta or elsewhere. This industry contines to out manuever the labor at every turn!

I joined Compass early on because NWA told the applicants that Compass was the way to get to NWA since NWA would not hire in the future and pilots would first come from Compass & Mesaba when needed. The MEC controlled this flying, the million dollar question is why they did not want to control who, and how, the large RJ flying would be used and for whom?

Unfortunatly, these we concerns of ours when the whole discussion of divesting Compass from the mainline MEC was being discussed. Once that was done it opened the door for our sale to TSA and now this discussion of adding planes and new carriers and stalling our careers even further.

 

I am not sure how you feel the MEC controlled this flying. The only thing we have is whats in the contract. The issue of representation has no bearing at all on this sale. Delta could have sold Compass regardless of the representation status at Compass. Sometimes I wonder if pilots ever actually read the contract. They could even have sold compass if we had somehow pulled off a miracle and convinced management to merge it into the mainline unless we also managed to add fragmentation language for those aircraft.

 

No vote. Reasoning:

* What if during a downturn Delta can not finance $45,000,000 for each 11 jobs?
* The CASM makes the E175 / E195 superior platform to the MD88 and in some cases is a replacement for the Airbus and 737NG. What if Delta decided to replace the MD88 fleet?
* If things get really ugly, what is easier to modify, (or toss out: (Arbitrary Limit) or (Seniority List) pick one.

As a union, our strongest job advancement position is unity. We have watched one convoluted line in the sand after another fail. Why would we wish to repeat what has not worked?

We should apply objective stress tests to our proposals.
- Would this provision allow one division of Delta to furlough pilots while another division is hiring?
- Would this provision create jobs which are not represented by D-ALPA and pilots who could challenge our exclusivity on Delta flying?
- Does this proposal honor Delta pilot seniority?
- Will this proposal increase the number of Delta pilot jobs?
- Will this proposal in any way harm ANYONE on the Delta seniority list?

Scope is easy when we are growing. Scope has to be built for worst case scenarios.

 

Absolutely, Bar. Well done.

Nu

 

We are really naive if we believe Delta, or ALPA, are in any way surprised by this transaction. First of all they are smart. Second of all, all these scenarios were discussed openly. You can also look at past examples, since nothing changes. ASA flies for United now. Republic morphed into direct competition.

For some reason, we don't play the game defensively. Must just be the arrogance of figuring we can't be beaten, ever.