Cape Air TA 1st contract
 

Lol, looks like Cape Air will have a better contract than GoJets!

Cape Air has a lot better than most regionals. I have never worked there but fly out of their base and have a few friends there. It is a company you rarely hear anything bad about from their employee group. They are doing many things right over there.

Well I only flipped through it briefly. But good for you guys.

What's the difference between a 402 Capt and 402 PIC?

I only skimmed it quickly but other than the 1 hour call out for reserves, (we get 1:45 or 2:00 depending on base) everything I saw looked better than the Pinnacolaba joint contract.

PIC is a guy with less than ATP mins. Usually flies the mail route from cape to islands.

The contract may look good from an outside point of view but we already have better work rules currently without a union. Also, our pay increase will only cover the cost of the union. If we vote this contract in, we will be getting worse work rules for the same pay. Can't see how anyone will vote yes.

Also the contract takes away the extra $3 an hour currently offered if based in the Caribbean. ($2 per hour for MVY and ACK) So some guys/girls will be taking a pay cut.

Is this duty or flight time? Last I recalled u guys got paid duty?

They pay duty time:
40 hr. Min Guarantee/week X 15.24hr X 52 weeks = $31,699.2
easy to do overtime at 150% + summer incentive + profit sharing
1st year not hard to make 40K

After nearly two years of negotiating, the IBT has successfully negotiated a contract in which 1/3 of the pilot group will take a 10 to 20 percent pay cut. Something is seriously wrong here. We were much better off without the IBT.

That's not bad at all. Sounds like my sort of flying. How long are new captains sitting reserve?

We don't really have traditional reserve. We have some backup lines, which occasionally involves sitting at the airport in one of the hubs in case you're needed for backup. But most of the new hires are sent to the outstations anyway, where there are typically no backup lines so you'll be flying.

Good for you guys. Nice to see some companies actually desire to have both a sucessful management and labor.

How are the work rules worse? I'd love to see some examples.

The Caribbean override was going away regardless and no one uses the override in MVY and ACK. So if you compare that to the protection LOA #5 gives you, it's a win. Also, read LOA #5 closely. When the road show makes it's way down there, they have a spreadsheet that will help it all make sense. It's not perfect, but in my opinion, I'm glad to see our "B scale" go away.

Like I said above, compare what this contract gives you to not having a contract and losing the overrides altogether. Also, like most people have been previously posting, compare this contract to other regionals. It's not better than all of them, but definitely better than most of them.

Pretty doubtful this will go through. Lots of guys out on the line can't believe the ta. Same pay as now for the bottom 75% of pilots. Carib pilots taking a pay cut, and the top guys get a raise. It looks like they copied our current manual and made it a ta. If we won't get a raise, might as well not have a contract and union dues!

Here we go again. Guys below 7 years seniority got a smaller raise than those above 7 years because in 2008, the junior half of the list got a $2+ raise, while the top half got nothing. If you factor in the 2008 raise and this one, it still favors the junior guys overall. I have no problem with people voting no for this TA, just do it for a good reason. The fact that you think they copied our current manual and made a TA from it makes me think you haven't read it. Stop hiding behind the anonymity of a forum like this and posting meaningless garbage. It's great to discuss the pro's and con's of this TA, but some facts would be nice. So here are some:

There are numerous improvements in the TA, like increased sick time which accumulates bi-weekly, long and short term disability, scheduled duty breaks, a 401k contribution from the company, increased min guarantee for the week and for the day, increased per diem, extra pay credit for unscheduled overnights, extra pay when you have less than 10 days off, vacation slide, an open time pool, improved vacation bidding, increased bereavement leave, full coverage for jury duty, and, this is something not everyone has, an ASAP program, which is huge. Ask any regional pilot who doesn't have it. This also doesn't factor in improvements that the union brought about that were implemented prior to the TA, like our base bidding system. Ask some guys who have been here for a while how much the old bidding system sucked. And be honest, that's a long list above.

There are also some negatives. Junior guys in the Caribbean won't be pay protected if or when they return next season, and senior guys are effectively pay protected but their pay is frozen until the rest of us catch up. I agree this is a big downside and very nearly outweighs a lot of things above. Just please take a deep breath, ignore all of the crap flying around in the Caribbean, and make an informed decision. If you want to vote no, then do so, but then help the union come up with some better alternatives that they can propose if this TA gets voted down.

It seems some people either haven't read the manuals or the TA. There are plenty of instances where this TA differs from the manuals and for the better.

Agreed, losing the override is a bummer, but if I have heard correctly the company will eliminate the override regardless of a YES or NO vote.

So I suppose it's either vote NO for no override, and no union dues. Or vote YES for no override, improvements in work rules/benefits, and an overall increase in pay with union dues.

First of all, I wasn't attacking anyone, unlike you. I am not hiding behind a forum, if you would prefer you can tell me who you are and I would be glad to say the same thing in person. I am merely stating that there are a lot of guys who have already voted no because of the pay issue. Caribbean based pilots just won't vote yes to a significant pay cut. If you dont think that is reason enough for them to vote no, maybe you should try a $3/hr pay cut. Next winter there will be the issue of forcing junior pilots to the Caribbean because no one will be able to afford to live there seasonally.

Yes I agree some of the work rules have been improved, but that doesnt change the fact of no pay change for 50+% of the pilots and a cut of pay for Carib pilots, and that is a huge deciding factor.

Btw the .25% 401 match is laughable at best. I'm not sure if you have ever worked anywhere else, but that is well below par.

I was rude, I apologize.
The $3/hr pay cut is moot. I believe the company will eliminate that override regardless of the outcome fo the vote.
.25% is low for a 401k but it is better than what currently exists


That's all for my 2 cents.

I may be wrong here since this is 9k's first contract but I don't believe the company can just cut the $3/hr override while in negotiations. It would be a change to the "status quo". It would be like the company cutting pay to $5/hr when a union is voted in and saying "ok we'll give you a 'raise' back to your original $15/hr rate".


Again I know this applies to companies amending a contract but I'm not sure if it applies while negotiating a first contract.


Either way good luck to everyone at 9K. It's always been a great place to work and I'm sure it will continue to be.

That is accurate. I think a better way to put it is, if there were no union negotiations, the override would be gone. During negotiations, the company's initial offer probably included cutting the override, and the unions initial offer was something similar to raising everyone's pay to Caribbean levels. And we met somewhere in the middle. Only thing is, do we think they met close enough to the middle, or do we need to work on section 3 some more.

Not sure if your comment was directed at me or bakesou, but I apologize if you felt that I was attacking you personally. The only thing I want to attack is people's flawed logic. This is what you said originally:
And here's what you replied with:
So even you agree they didn't do anything close to copying our current manual and making it a TA. In my first response to you, one of the main points I wanted to make was that, despite the weak section 3 (which I agree is a huge downside), there is a LOT more to be gained from this TA. The argument that a year 1 pilot's raise is equal to his union dues, therefore the TA is useless, is absolutely ridiculous and juvenile.

I live in the Boston area, where the cost of living is higher than just about anywhere in the Caribbean, and I've been on a 35 min line all winter, so I know exactly what that feels like. It's awful. But don't get me wrong, I understand why a Caribbean pilot will vote no. I don't expect them to do otherwise. I just want them to make an informed decision. Most of the crap flying around down there, even on the company frequency, has been ridiculous and uninformed. Here are some examples from this forum:
This is my favorite:
Anyways, moving on...
I agree the 401k match is weak. I wanted a 100% match up to 3% or something like that. One of the other reasons I might vote no. There are a lot of older pilots here who are going to work here until they retire, and they are going to need a strong 401k in order to do that. The 1:4 match isn't going to help at all.

Thank you for making this point. For the most part, I think pilots would still be able to live there comfortably, at least in the PR bases, but this new TA will most likely make the Caribbean go junior and some of the bases, in their high season, will be very difficult to live in, so it's a double whammy. I seriously doubt that if we vote this TA down that we will be able to bump the payscale up that much (although it's obviously worth a shot), but one of the better ideas that I've heard up here was to have special additional moving allowances on top of the regular allowance for the islands that are the most expensive.

The main thing that frustrates me is that so many pilots at Cape Air put zero effort and, most importantly, input into these negotiations, and then got all upset when they didn't get their way. Do you know how many Caribbean pilots got involved with the negotiations? ZERO! If some of them did, maybe section three might have turned out differently. So make this your wake up call. If the TA gets voted down, help the union come up with realistic ways to make it, and most importantly section 3, better!

This is not true. I've lived in both, and the Caribbean is MUCH more expensive. Boston does have one of the highest cost of living indexes in the US but it is not an island. Where have you lived in the Caribbean? Comparing ACK and MVY would be a little more accurate but not Boston.

Edit:


Puerto Rico is definitely cheaper than Boston. So that would be a fair comparison. The smaller islands don't have as many options for places to live and they are just as large of bases as SJU. Food is very expensive in the USVI.

Yeah, this is kinda what I meant in my long reply. Our SJU and MAZ bases might not be so difficult to live in under the new rules, but it might not be enough for a 1st year pilot with a 40 hour line in places like the USVI, and probably any of the islands down there. We'd have to see how the new contract would affect how junior the Caribbean goes. One thing to take into consideration though, which might help at least a little; if they vote this TA into effect, they might start building a lot more lines with overtime down there. I know that because of the override and locality pay, they were trying to run as lean as possible down there, so maybe the lines and staffing would change for the better. That's just wild speculation though. And no I haven't lived in the Caribbean, I've been lucky enough to be able to stay up north my entire career here (if you can call a 35 min line lucky). I've been asking a lot of people who have been in the Caribbean though, to get an idea of how much it costs to live down there. I think your comparison to MVY and ACK would probably be pretty accurate as far as food and gas goes.

SJU expansion
 

I would guess that with PR overtime rules for OT after 8 hours going away {when pilots sign off on this contract} that Cape Air will expand flying out of SJU and shrink the outstation bases to a minimum. This plan is already being put into place for northern bases for this year starting in May. More pilots will be based in HYA BOS and EWB. MVY and ACK will only have two pilots each.
This makes sense to me. The senior pilots in the outstations will get to stay in their bases where they want to be and the transitioning pilots will get to fly out of SJU where the hub of the operation is and the cost of living is cheaper. This is also a better deal for people who transition because they get a higher year round minimum and get to transition to San Juan where they can use public transportation thats paid for by the company. The override is less necessary in SJU because as previously stated in posts above the cost of living in SJU is comparable to the North East.

The SJU overtime can't "go away", this is an overtime law like several other States. Overtime pay required for any hours over 8 in a single day and on a statutory rest day. The overtime rate is double time (2 times the regular rate). I'm betting Cape Air is paying time and a half?

I wish this was the case , however Lawyers say you give up these rights thru a CBA, the laws for overtime can be bypassed. I somehow doubt that a labour lawyer would be wrong but you never know. The time in and half rate for over forty hours in a calender week still exist so all over time wont be lost. Hopefully the company will not be afraid to sched. pilots for over eight hour shifts now so they will get over forty hours on a weekly basis.