DRR only applies to positive vacancies. It is worthless when there aren’t any, but people can still get in on a secondary. DRR should apply to any opening in a base.

When someone senior gets in and tells someone junior who’s displaced, “sorry bro, seniority rules. Better luck next month”…they are taking a dump on you. Just because the company did what they want doesn’t mean you look the other way because it benefits you.

Same as when they take a whole month of July by block bidding and then horse trade it to whoever they want. When someone with 25% seniority can’t hold a summer week…the system is broke (which is why we voted repeatedly to change it).

 

The company negotiators love it when they successfully dupe someone like you into blaming fellow pilots instead of the true source of the pain…… the company.

It would be far more effective to make displacements so expensive in the first place ( dh lines to TDY, hotels for the duration of displacement plus a stipend, etc ) that the company doesn’t do them.

I know being displaced sucks….. but your fellow pilots nor the new contract created this pain.

The company did.

You are feeling the pain because the company stopped hiring, shuffled people all over like deck chairs on the titanic, AND THEN set the vacancies to zero.

If the vacancy had a positive number, your DRR would win over other pilots trying to bid into your home domicile no matter how senior they are.

You actually would get 100% of those positive numbers thanks to the improvements in this contract, the old one was only 50%.

Your fellow pilots had ZERO to do with causing this pain and seeking to restrict them is an error.





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This is my first airline but I’m catching on to the negotiating strategy and it’s painful. We continually get punched in the nose until we negotiate that we can’t be punched in the nose. Then we’re continually punched in the ear until we negotiate that we can’t be punched in the ear. Then we’re continuously punched in the eye until we negotiate that we can’t be punched in the eye anymore.
It gets really bad at contract time. then we start to get punched and kicked in five places but union “negotiating capital” says we can only negotiate the pain to stop in 2-3 places.

 

Actually this is very normal. Management will always exploit a provision if they can/need to. In this case, displacements came out of nowhere and here we are. We are half way through the cycle already and have filed a bunch of grievances. Thats normal. That's never not happened. It's a business and mangement treats the CBA as such. That will always be the case. Personally I don't think vacancy/displacements will be a must change because its going to change regardless when a new airplane appears. It will change that whole section just by virtue of training costs and movements. So flexing bases on a monthly basis maybe something that will dramatically decrease or maybe even be mute. Their are many ways to skin that cat in the vacancy section. No negotiating capital required. SWAPA will look at others to see what will fit here. Other than the Lance program, this section really has never been something the collective have cared about. Now it reared it's ugly head. BJ and the whole industry will tell you they also got punched in the nose when these contracts were implemented. Biggest labor cost increase in probably two and half decades for the airlines. Some airlines like UAL(FA's) and Frontier(Pilots) are trying hard to suppress it but it will come to a head. Thats the cost doing business. We witnessed the best bargaining cycle in our careers. All the stars lined up for that. By the time we get to section 6, other will be deep in theirs. So we'll see how it goes. I have a feeling our's will be more interesting in this go around. As AW has stated, the next phase will be most consequential for the company, which means SWAPA will have to be involved to make it happen and we as whole will have to vote on it.

 

Right, but the reason I replied about the suggestion to displace only into vacancies was try to prevent a bad idea from getting legs. We need good ideas talked about and debated for the next cycle.

I think we came from the same place. For some reason I thought they were displaced to BUF (it was before my time), but either way, absolutely abysmal contractual protections. We don't want that here, and I think what was suggested in the post I replied to would have that sort of thing happen.

 

How would you handle someone who is getting displaced from DAL but has the seniority to hold HOU. There are no vacancies in HOU, but there are in BWI. This person would rather be based in HOU than BWI. Your suggestion is to have this person commute half way across the country to BWI vs HOU because you want to fight against the snowbirds. I don't think we restrict ourselves as a group. I think we need to add voluntary measures and attempt to further restrict the company. DRR going from 50% to 100% was a step in the right direction. TDY and other penalties to the company should be on the docket next cycle. Food for thought: If you're thinking about restricting the vacancy bid from monthly to some other frequency then we should think about allowing base trades.

 

One thing is for sure, the company will not do anything about it. We will have to negotiate it. As the company know’s, never let leverage go to waist. Especially if they can something for it.

 

also one thing is for sure when the time comes, 6+ years from now no one will care.

 

Numerous pilots bid into another base for September in order to enhance their vacation prospects. They successfully bid into bases with displaced pilots. That bases displaced pilots keep commuting. The next month those ‘enhanced vacation’ pilots bid back into their previous base. That base also has pilots displaced. They continue to commute.

The DRR language is toothless and ineffective. By design. Both sides negotiating it knew what the words meant. Neither cared. Both had different reasons for not caring.

 

You can bid anywhere your seniority can hold if displaced. So a DAL guy goes to HOU and a HOU guy goes to BNA and a BNA guy goes to MDW and MDW guy goes to BWI…or however it works out. That why we have 5% of the pilot group displaced now. 1 displacement can create 2-4 more.

I’m saying that if there are 0 vacancies into DAL but 3 DAL guys go to PHX for the winter…that 3 MCO guys can’t bid DAL and get in before your displaced HOU guy gets back. Any movement back into a base “should” be displaced pilots prior to non-displaced folks just wanting to move around…sort of like how a in base OT bid takes priority over an out of base bid.

I agree that in an ideal world, the company would have come to the union to negotiate solutions prior to doing the BS they did like TDY lines, base trades, etc. But the idiots at HDQ shoot first and ask ?’s later….

One more thing to fix in ‘28.