lake alice

Listen, read, absorb. Ask a JetBlue pilot why our premium trigger was raised from 70 to 78 and who was behind it? Why are we so far behind in retirement?
Why do we pay so much more for health insurance than everyone else? Let's also address the options given to pilots upon hiring. Each pilot was issued 6000 options that were include as part of our overall compensation package. They were not fully vested and were under water upon issuance. Interesting how that is spun to make people think we were issued a benefit. Our leadership team has always had a lower salary than other airlines. But like other airlines our leadership team does award itself with grants, 15 million this year. Their overall compensation is on par with other airline executives while the pilots are no. Lest we forget what the grants do to the price and dilution of existing shares.
Until recently JetBlue appointed ALL committee members and our pay and benefits are a result of this. As opinions on this board reflect JetBlue hand picked these pilots to review and recommend changes to our pay and benefits. Because we have no say the results are obvious in the form of arbitrary changes and rigs shifting a capped operating budget. As mentioned before jetblue still apoints 1/3 of all members to committees and much like the operating budget the results a certain. In essence all the changes are cost neutral.
These little nuggets are kept out of the lime light.

The very people telling you they are happy settling for less are the very people who do not understand ERISA, insurance, B funds, LOL/STD/LTD. Before you come to JetBlue or share with pilots how great JetBlue it is you must understand what the above terms mean and how they affect you going forward.

P-3Bubba

Ugh..............

whatifguy

Ugh what?? Lake is spot on.

JetBlue is a major, not some crappy regional. Anyone who is willing to settle for less than what a major airline pilot AVERAGES is more then welcome to go back to their crappy regional. This is my 18th year in the industry, I've seen more than most, been through more than 85% of you...Because of our industry's seniority system you can't just switch jobs like a doctor or lawyer.

Once you reach a major you're supposed to be "set." For those of us at JetBlue, especially the bottom 40% of the list, we are far from "set" with no end in sight and things continually getting worse. Meanwhile we have to hear every quarter about record profits, record-breaking load factors, and silent disco's.

As a major airline pilot at an extremely profitable company, I just want my fair share, and a look at the numbers tells you that I'm at least 10-15% short of that in overall compensation and benefits. Don't settle for less than you're worth, believe me, they can afford it!

lake alice

This is not a popular sentiment with the "happy to be here crowd".

Diesel1030

"but it's better than Mesa/ xxxx "... I love this one when I hear it. Meanwhile they will continue to hire regional zero pic guys with no hope of going anywhere but are "happy to be here"

P-3Bubba

Ugh to you too.

lake alice

http://db.tt/S1VoOuEC

lake alice

Clear Right

What if,
Most of us agree with both you and Lake, we just disagree on the method in which to get there. One would hope that your desire would be to work for a company that continues to be profitable and continues to grow organically. Every post that I have made has acknowledged the fact that our retirement needs to improve compared to our peers. There is no argument there.

However, we are very fairly compensated, and if you choose to be productive you and Lake both know that you can do as well if not better than your peers at Airline X who have been on property for an equal amount of time. I can tell you for a fact that my compensation and quality of life is hands down better than my counterparts at Airline X, pick a major with the same longevity. Mind you SWA is an exception on pay, but my seniority (i.e. QOL) is better relative to theirs.

My point is to go about the improvements in a responsible way that does not hurt our competitive advantage, think about improvements without Legacy CBA ideas. Scope is one example: Take Cape Air for example and our routes to Nantucket. During the season we fly Mainline Aircraft profitably full of pax. But during the off-season...Sorry B6 customer, you have to fly on our partner Cape Air, oh and by the way we have great connecting flight through BOS. This is smart business. Legacy CBA ideas would say that needs to be Mainline flying in the off-season and would try to dictate the company fly an unprofitable route in the interest of labor protectionism, bad business decisions dictated by labor. Or the thought that we shouldn't allow a Hawaiian Code Share because labor should dictate corparate stretegy that we should have wide bodies one day...really...do you think that is smart business??

This is just one small example of my point, make the improvements, but don't hurt the company interests, there has to be a balance if you want the airline to survive for the long haul. Again just my opinion and I respect yours as well.

lake alice

Clear right, the truth is we are not fairly compensated. By JetBlues own agreed to pay and compensation review, see above link, our pay is still a minimum of 2 to 3% behind using JetBlues blended average, straigh pay is off the charts. In retirement JetBlue says 3% but in reality it's much greater, minimum 8%, as the standard for our peers is based on a guaranteed monthly deposit. Our sick time is yearly limited and we dont have separate banks. Our vacation time is minimum 7 days yearly behind as well. The pay is consider average if we fly close to our max. In reality most are not even complaining about pay. Work hard and get paid well is fine with me. The days of 50 hour months for 90 hours of pay remain only at FedEx and UPS. Lastly our LTD/STD/LOL are terrible.

The aggrevating thing about these discussions for most of us on the CBA front is pilots who continue to say we are fairly compensated when the data suggest otherwise. Keep in mind this whole argument is in an effort to become INDUSTRY STANDARD ONLY. We work more, longer and harder than any other pilot group but we are only asking for industry standard.

Even of we agree that the pay/benefits are low there is still the issue of a CBA. ERISA prevents JetBlue from ever separating us from the rest of the employee group meaning we will never have a guaranteed monthly deposit into our 401K's. JetBlue refuses to allow us to separate our health insurance as well because as they have stated we are all equal. You and both know that is not the case. If we can't separate our health insurance we are unable to make the necessary changes to STD/LTD/LOL.
These are our realities.
Non of thei even takes into account the 5 documents, our lack of negotiating ability or merger protection.