Not sure where you are getting your info but it is pretty outdated. The company backed off their proposal asking for cuts when we asked them to show us in the books why they need them and they couldn't. That happened a long time ago.

But the current ERJ rates seem to be higher than industry-standard 70-seat rates. Either we have to believe that an arbitrator would impose a paycut on pilots for flying a larger aircraft, or we have to admit that the threat of a whipsaw between the two groups is pretty negligible. There's just not enough of a difference between the two rates for an arbitrator to come up with a new rate that is substantially below our 70-seat CRJ rate and yet remains above the current ERJ rates.

On January 5th, from the ASA MEC: "The remaining issues in the JCBA are mostly financial, job security, and of course, which bidding system to use. Another contributing reason for the slow pace of negotiations now is that many of the Company’s proposals have become regressive relative to both existing contracts. In some areas the Company’s proposals are worse than what is contained in other recent bankruptcy conditioned agreements."

Line bidding with your rules is not a concession. It merely takes longer than what we have now. The company will not accept line bidding. The ASA group did not stand against your line bidding. The company did.

You are incorrect again. The last pass from the company back in June and it is still their position. Your guys need to get back to table with our guys. There are still many open pieces that the company is stalling on. PBS is just a small piece of the pie so please stop pretending everything hinges on a bidding system. It doesn't. We will end up with a common position. If the company gets motivated to get a deal it will not be held up by a bidding system. Your MEC needs to quit stoking the fires of division.

We are not the enemy here. The company wants to pay you less and make you work more. The ASA pilots do not.

this is false, they absolutely were against our line bidding.

What do you mean takes longer...I have my schedule by the 10th of every month, when do you get yours?

The ASA MEC already knew that line bidding would not be part of the next contract, regardless. In that respect, Joe is correct.

Exactly. And when it comes time to negotiate those rules that you NEED the company is going to laugh in your face. They just aren't going to make the same mistake they made with us. They know what they need from PBS and that is a system like Skywest has. Not SmartPref or FlightLine.

Yes, that's what I wrote. They told crewing solutions to reprogram smartpref so that its prefbid. When they said no, the ASA guys said, "see, they can't program it to our parameters" or something to that effect. Not even prefibid had CDOs programmed into at first either, by the way. As for vacation conflicts, again, you just mentioning that points out that there is not an understanding of how smartpref works. The award analysis is being worked on.

It will be used for all phase 2 bidders. Which is probably more people than what you guys have bidding in your smaller bases.

And asking our group, who is happy with our line bidding by the way, to take prefbid is a concession. Not to mention that the best thing about it, vacation low, would be gone. If smartpref is not a concession for us, then it would be a QOL increase for you.

Again, if stating facts is mudslinging and telling lies, then I guess they are guilty as charged. Happy now?

Your own mec said that other than which pbs, only scope and pay are left. You can't do finish scope or pay until you have a complete scheduling section because rates are multipliers to the work rules. So in essence, they have admitted that they put the roadblock up over pbs. The only reason why your guys are not at the table with our negotiating a joint contract is because of their flight line or nor merger ultimatum.

The company negotiator asked them at the table if they were willing to hold up the merger over pbs vendor, not work rules, and they said yes. This was after multiple ideas to get past this roadblock that they turned down, including third party neutral arbitrator. They are indeed holding this up. If they weren't, management wouldn't be moving on to plan b and negotiating with the XJT side. Think about it. This isn't rocket science.

This is also false. They are unwilling now but they were willing last spring. There is no burden. The XJT MEC already compromised. The ASA MEC has not moved an inch.

Its the same work rules that would be negotiated under any pbs. Its matter of getting them to the right place. That task will be hard regardless of which pbs. We are talking about things like vacation and training credits, rigs, DPMs, MMG, line divisor, min days off, CDOs, hours of service, minimum rest, and a whole lot more things that fall just in the scheduling section. But smartpref does not require the capital to negotiate for vacation low.

Yeah, why is the ASA MEC dragging this out further? They can chose to send this disagreement to an arbitrator. For some reason they didn't like that idea.

See above. Of course the company is trying to get whatever cuts they can. That's their job. The ASA MEC said that the 3 things holding this up is pay, scope, and pbs. Well you if you aren't willing to lift your ultimatum on pbs, then negotiations are not going anywhere.

Speaking of your experience with globalization, what experience do you have with globalization? We can't even get to trying to see what rules we can negotiate for in smartpref because of the ASA MEC ultimatum. And if what you say is true, even with flight line, how can we expect to maintain the work rules, much less improve them, when the best thing about it, vacation low has already been given up? With a whole new scheduling section, ANY PBS will be unproven.

Keep throwing in the CAL system. Carmen solves to zero open time. That's the biggest issue with that system. Smartpref does NOT and CANNOT solve to zero open time.

We need to go back to the table? Its not us who are setting ultimatums. News flash, we are at the negotiating table. It just you guys that are missing because you refuse to take your fingers out of your ears. This is NOT a small piece of the pie. This pbs issue is what caused the company to negotiate rates for dual class RJs with the XJT side. If you want to keep saying that its not a big issue, go ahead and sit on the sidelines while the company uses an arbitrator decides the rates.

Let me put it this way. You say that if the company gets motivated enough, we will have a deal. What if the company was willing to pay $25 million more on the contract to get it done. Well, if the ASA MEC doesn't lift their ultimatum, how can the company negotiate with us?

I think Joe means that the ASA MEC was and still is against our line bidding and work rules.

Yes, they have already made it clear that they don't live vacation low. And smartpref does not require vacation low.

The thing that amazes me is how many guys are sold an SmartPref, yet have never actually seen it run a full bid solution. Those of us who like Flightline actually like it because we have seen it work and like the way it works, at least compared to what we came from. It isn't that we aren't willing to look at a different option, we just are remiss to give up what we have for a stack of unknowns, which is currently what SmartPref is for the ASA side. Show us what it does. Don't tell us....show us. Run a bid solution with it so we can compare.