Read it carefully. There is no hurry to settle this contract. We are in the drivers seat. You see, that little section is the one that gave us that puny half percent raise last month. Well, guess what? AMR is going to be 14% ahead of us on 1/1/2016. UAL is going to be one percent behind us on that date and preparing for their own Section 6. lets say they get AMR minus one percent. That means we get pretty close to the same plus we keep our profit sharing intact.n Also, don't forget the other "loopholes" they want to close on us, profit sharing et al. Even if negotiations were to stretch out for 3 years we would still get two look backs in that time. Educate yourselves!

 

Yet another reason why we don't need to rush if the cost of doing so is concessions of any kind.

 

As I read section 3.B.4, in order to trigger a comparison of our 757 rate to the other airlines, the company must first give a raise to at least 30% of the non-pilot Delta workforce. The 3-4% raise for all non-pilot frontline employees to begin 2015 is what triggered the review a couple months ago. However, if there are no raises for our fellow employees at Delta, it doesn't matter how much American and United go past us....so whether we get the comparison to AA/UAL is really in the hands of the company. If they choose not to raise pay for the other workers, they don't have to worry about possibly triggering a raise for us......at least that's how I read it.

 

There's a 100% chance they will raise other worker pay at least a little bit. The reasons are very obvious and the timing doesn't support stonewalling every other work group (or 70+% of them anyway) just to be able to stonewall us. That wouldn't go over well with any work group and would be an instant anchor tied to any leadership team that tried it in this day and age of billion+ dollar quarters.

 

Thank You for posting this dalad!

 

Again, as I read the section, the comparison review following an across the board raise for the non pilot workforce can only occur once every 18 months.

As for depending on raises for the other work groups as a strategy, how often have our other work groups received rasies (I honestly don't know). I do know that this most recent one was announced the same week in last September that the IAM annouced their card drive to once again try to organize the F/As....I don't think that was a coincidence. Since then, that drive has fallen apart embarrassingly amidst charges of fraud in the card signatures. My guess is that it will be a while before there are any organizing attempts here at Delta. Meanwhile, you say that it would be difficult for airlines not to give raises during times of record profit, but I can show you dozens of them at the moment who are dragging their feet with various workgroups.

Look, there are excellent reasons not to rush into any agreement, but I'm not sure this is one of them. At the very least, I would recommend that people actually read the contract and draw their own conclusions. Then I would recommend that we don't depend on the kindness of the company to offer raises to everyone else as a bargaining strategy.

 

Good catch, and good eyes recognizing the trigger also.

You are not the first person to recognize this, I've actually asked an NC member about 3.B.4 and they are fully aware of it plus the additional incremental leverage it provides.

 

While 3B4 isn't a guarantee of increased pay, it further lessens the need for immediacy on the part of the pilot group. If the first TA we see is just good, but not good enough, we can send it back for a do over. While we are waiting on the improvements, we can help start a union drive for the FAs, and trigger another pay raise.

 

+717 or warp factor 350.900

TEN

 

That would define irony. Delta attempts to be cheap with our contract and we help organize the flight attendants and other employee groups.

Perhaps we should begin a whole-hearted effort to help them organize beginning now.

With the trigger and increased profit sharing we'd be looking at at maybe 15% (7% + at least 8% more of W-2 in PS) a little more than a year from now even without a contract.