Airline Pilot Central Forums - Pinnacle/Colgan/Mesaba TA Countdown

Quote:

Originally Posted by PapaMike (Post 915154)

I understand the whole "those who don't learn from the past are destined to repeat it" idea, i do. Let me ask you how long it took you guys to get your first TA from the time you started negotiating?" Even more appropriate would probably be the question "how long did it take you to get the sections that are currently TA'd on your first go around?"
It was much longer then 3 months. So this isn't even close to being what you had gone through. No one here is going to wait 5 more years for a JCBA. I don't see it going very much longer before everyone agrees that it's been too long. But we haven't hit that point yet.

First go around took entirely too long, but that is for a number of reasons. The more appropriate question would be how long did it take us to close those sections on our second go around? To answer that, I will repost something that is a few pages back. Please read it if you are actually interested in getting an answer to your question.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SrfNFly227 (Post 914578)

I had been trying to stay silent during this, but I am sick of some people on here acting as if the Pinnacle MEC doesn't know what they are doing. I am sick of the "it's not our first rodeo" comments from Mesaba guys. I am sick of hearing how close we are to a contract. I want to give a little perspective to the people who have not dealt with the Pinnacle Management for very long.

Pretty much everybody reading this will know that the Pinnacle pilots reached a TA in August 2009. In September, we voted that garbage down and started a new period in our negotiations. The next few months were spent voting new members in to the MEC, doing a poll to figure out what the pilots wanted in a new contract, deciding on a path for negotiations, and cleaning up the language in the failed TA. The language was of course very important, since our management loves to interpret things differently than how we do.

Actual negotiations didn't really start until the week of March 8th. Negotiations then went on for 4 of the next 5 weeks. We heard from management how much they wanted to get this done. We bought it, again, or at least faked it well enough to act in good faith. Here are direct quotes from the negotiating committee updates that we got over the next few months.

Oh, and the gaps between some of these dates is because of NMB availability.

3/16/10 - "Today, we started with our second of four scheduled weeks of negotiations with the company. We are building upon the good momentum established during last week’s session where many of the lagging problems were resolved. Additionally, we were able to agree in concept on many other issues that are in various states of drafting."

4/09/10 - "While there was considerable anticipation that a deal might be reached this week, in the end there was too much work remaining on the outstanding sections. A mutual decision was made to extend our direct negotiations period beyond the originally agreed to four week period in order to preserve the momentum we have generated thus far."

4/9/10 - "After the review of the outstanding issues, we started with provisions regarding pay and scheduling shortfalls when returning to service from leaves including medical, OJI, military, and personal. We continued the positive momentum and completed work in several other areas that needed improvement including call in honest provisions, home study allotments, as well as several scheduling issues."

5/11/10 - "The past several weeks have been productive in finding resolution to many of the outstanding issues identified in the pilot group polling and editorial review. The list of open items has been paired down significantly even from where we were just a month ago. Continuous updates will be broadcast throughout the week detailing our progress at this week’s session. Stand by for more updates."

5/11/10 - Today’s contract negotiating session with the Company was very productive. Early in the day, we secured final agreement on all of the proposed changes to both Section 1 (Scope) and the Parent Letter that binds Pinnacle Corp. to our pilot group. The changes in these two documents, while not immense, clarify, strengthen, and fill the gaps of the agreement made in the first TA. We also clarified language in Section 3 (Compensation) that makes it more clear on the conditions required for the listed carriers to be included in the industry average.

Later in the day we continued work on a multifaceted package deal that focuses on a number of pilot availability issues, including eleventh day off for reserves, junior assigning, extensions, and a number of other reserve issues. The topics within this package have been narrowed down significantly and we will continue working on this Wednesday morning. Successful resolution of this package will significantly reduce our list of open issues and allow us to move forward with the final issues."

5/13/10 - "Progressive movement towards a successor tentative agreement was made today. Resolution was had on all remaining vacation issues and provisions were agreed to that improve the administrative and structural issues with the reserve bucket lists. Provisions that allow pilot group visibility and association oversight of the bucket list were also added. Difficulty persisted and little progress was made on benefit issues, such as the retirement and insurance sections as well as several pilot availability issues that are on the table.

6/22/10 - "We started the day reviewing and clarifying the list of open issues still needing resolution to achieve a comprehensive agreement. We then proceeded to exchange proposals. Throughout the day, we were able to reach agreement on some issues including final resolution on pay scales and duration but we remain distant on several others.

6/23/10 - "Today’s negotiating session saw both parties at the table for over 11 hours. Many proposals were exchanged on retirement and insurance issues but no resolution was had on either subject."

6/24/10 - "Days two and three were spent primarily focused on proposals and discussion about retirement and insurance issues. The Company was largely unwilling to engage in meaningful discussion on any other topics. We were unable to close a significant gap in how far we are apart on these issues. Proposals from the Company insisted on drastic concessions in our medical insurance plan including:

In exchange for these massive cuts in our health insurance plan the company was only willing to offer a paltry 1.05% increase in the matching level of the 13+ year longevity step on our retirement plan. This retirement and insurance package represented significant concessions even when measured against our current contract’s provisions. These concessions, combined with no movement on the other important issues we presented, caused the week’s negotiations to end with no TA."

Next thing we new, we were put on ice by the NMB and within the week came announcement that the company had purchased Mesaba. You will notice that things were going great in negotiations right up until the last day. That was when the company came at us with the Retirement and Insurance plans.

Notice the similarities between those negotiations and what is currently going on. That whole process was just over 3 months, we are now over 2 months in to this process. We had multiple "deadlines" come up and we continued talks because of "momentum". At the end of 2 months of negotiating we had a lot of closed sections, but the big items (Insurance, Retirement, Compensation) remained open. Those same items are open today, just over 2 months in to negotiations.

Our MEC and our pilots thought now was the right time for picketing because we have seen this whole thing play out before. Yes, I know Pinnacle isn't alone in this anymore, but we are still fighting with the same management team. The sooner we all agree that the company probably isn't playing nice, the better for everybody.