The guy who brought up the question of why we pay in to the merger fund didn't really understand the purpose of it. After it was explained, he came back and said its probably a good idea to have it.

Anyone who understands business will tell you that the regional side of the industry is undergoing consolidation. As carriers have a harder time attracting people willing to make $20-30k/year, they will lose flying, and the pilots will need somewhere to go. Along with contraction comes mergers/acquisitions. The merger fund is a pool that they would use in such a case that we are bought/merged to protect your seniority rights. Just look at US airways.. They never sorted out the USAir/AMwest situation, and now AAG has to negotiate with three different representation chairs. Legal representation isn't free.

Now I ask you I'm the most constructive way possible: what would you have the union focus on? And I don't mean "everyone should make $150,000.. I mean realistically. The MEC is made of volunteers from our own pilot group. Don't you think they/we have our own best interest in mind? If you think they need to do better at something, why not contact a REP and have a conversation about the direction we are headed and how that aligns with what you think is important; or better yet, why don't you volunteer for a position and make a difference?

 

All effort is just futility thrust into the endless abyss

 

I own you so bad.

 

What does that even mean? Like when you type that to someone, what are you hoping they think?

 

Wasn't it the same guy answering who said "Skywest's stock price is cratering" and are facing huge imminent issues...yet the stock price is actually not far off a 2 year high? So you want me to believe him on the rest of his "facts" he uses to scare us into submission on why that's best for us? How many people have paid into the fund since its inception? How many will benefit from it when/if it is used? Answer: A fraction of those who pay into it. I say open up a vote for it and let the pilot group speak. But, it won't happen because ALPA reps know what is better for us than we do.

Sure they are volunteers and I thank them for it whenever I see or fly with them. But many get paid the same amount as they would flying to be home more with family...it's not the same as volunteering at the soup kitchen. I left my previous job to fly more, so I have no business volunteering to do this kind of work right. Otherwise I would.

Lastly re consolidation of regionals...it will happen. Do we need a merger fund to help out our seniority numbers? Maybe the lifers need it, but the majority of Mesa pilots aren't lifers and a merger won't really affect movement to a major for the majority of us. So again, this fund only affects a minority of the pilot group. Seniority for what is supposed to be a 3-5 year gig (that's using company numbers) doesn't really matter in the long run. This is apples to oranges when comparing it to DAL/NW, US/AW and other mainline mergers where relative seniority vs DOH affects people's QOL for a long time ((career airlines vs stepping stones). For regionals, with a high turnover rate, it isn't the same.

What should the union focus on? How about decent (livable) pay rates and QOL. Which is just about every section of our contract. How long have negotiations been going on? All areas can be improved upon. It is a fallacy that only a few things deserve attention because there is just to much. Oh there's no money left on the table at any of the regionals due to razor thin margins yet DAL just made 2.5bil profit in one quarter? Maybe the business model should change and FFD should go away. Maybe we should all be on the street applying to the majors who will need to recapture flying and take on CRJ9/EJET/C Series/etc., since we do the same job the majors do.

In a period of record profits by those who pay our companies' pay checks (applicable to all regionals), now is not the time to accept crappy contracts, especially with a pilot shortage. And our union should be jumping up and down echoing that sentiment and getting all ALPA regional pilot groups to echo the same. Why they aren't is beyond me. If there is no money to pay people what they are worth, change the business model. It is only because we accept it (by filling classes and not quitting) that we are paid these wages. We only accept it because it is supposed to be temporary and there are few other viable means to the end. And then temporary stepping stone jobs turn to a career job in which people are underpaid for a career, not just a few years.

 

Whenever I hear of a ffd carrier getting 30 airplanes here and there, my opinion is that the flying belongs at mainline. I'm definitely with you there.

However if the money isn't there, the company can't and won't commit to paying out what it doesn't have. It's simply not going to price itself out of business. The Mec also isn't going to negotiate unrealistically and ask the company to price itself out of business. Their purpose is to protect/improve our station, and that means improving everything we can without making our jobs disappear. There was a guy on the last Mec call crying about how the company must have money if they bought seven airplanes. I suppose he never heard of a thing called financing. You get awarded flying which is a guaranteed stream of money, and you pay for airplanes with the flying that they perform.

Sure the ffd model is has flown it's course, and is on the way out, I agree with you. However, the nails in the ffd coffin is going to be supply/demand, not negotiation under the RLA. DAL/AAG making record profits doesn't affect us much at all. We're a contract carrie; that means whether mainline is feast or famine, we get a flat fee, which happens to be crap.

 

To be owned like a puppy dog or you know, a muppet with his hand up your rear...

 

It means every time facebiter posts you see this:

This message is hidden because FaceBiter is on your ignore list.

It's a beautiful thing!

 

The problem is that you, and every other FFD carrier, are simply contractors for the UA/DL/AA code. This means you have no leverage because there are so many FFD's fighting for the same scraps. The majors have leverage to negotiate because they negotiate using their own code and that is why DL got a TA ($hitty one at that) as quickly as they did.

At UA the "new small narrow-body" doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon which means management can't take advantage of the January '16 scope increase. This means 50 seaters will be parked with nothing backfilling it as we are at the contractual max right now. Attrition will be the cure.

My guess is ALPA will do it's best to improve the regionals within reason, but at the end of the day why throw more money towards improving a part of the industry that is going to continue to shrink?

 

That's kind of my point. If we take what they give us (and if FFD carriers take what they can get to gain contracts from daddy mainline at bottom dollar and razor thin margins), we will be around for a bit longer than if we take a unified stance against poverty for pilots (ie current regional picture across the board, even for the "good" ones) and vote down embarrassing contracts. This will accelerate the ultimate demise of the regional industry as it is today (which is overdue IMO as mainline is out of bankruptcy mode and into record profit mode). Regional/FFD airlines still operate in bankruptcy mode. The day every regional in existence today goes BK or is bought by mainline can't come soon enough.

I don't care if we price the regionals out of the picture sooner rather than later and force mainline to absorb the flying that they should be doing anyway. Southwest is (or started as) a regional that flies 737s and pays pilots ok. Works for them. We have allowed mainline to fly routes/frequencies they otherwise couldn't for as cheap as we can do it. Labor cost is one of the reasons we are able to do it. At some point in this broken regional model, labor prices will have to go up, and outsourcing will end for a large chunk of the flying that exists today (ie the shrinkage you speak of). If ALPA really cared about regionals, they would have made that stance long ago and fought the growth and proliferation of the FFDs.

But it's not just ALPA, it's also us pilots, who are our own worst enemy and don't hold the line hard enough. We always take care of our own short term interests and stab each other in the back and take concessionary contracts to get more flying or whatever, because it benefits us and could help accelerate our move to a career airline.

But, with a surplus of pilots (which there currently is), and enough of us willing to work for poverty wages (and lateral move etc), I'm wasting my thumb strokes. Not enough regional pilots will fight to earn what we are worth, bc we are convinced it's a temporary job and things will get better. And that's what we have been used to for the last decade plus as RJs became more prolific. We are the beaten wife in the whole beaten wife analogy, but are used to it and expect nothing more. JO will fill classes paying people less than they made as a 250 hour CFI. And when he can't, he will throw a few bucks at candidates, enough to staff at the bare minimum level.