Sorry for butting in here, but I have an honest question. What is the difference between a retro payment and a ratification bonus? I’m not being sarcastic. I really don’t know the difference.

Are there differing tax consequences—for the Company or the recipient? Does one pay out even if someone retires prior to the date of signing?

I’ve seen several posts where folks have some strong feelings ref. calling it one thing or another and I still haven’t seen an explanation of any difference other than semantics.

I'd argue that it's 0% or less. This payment includes the next 12 months difference in the current 4:15 daily guarantee and the 5:00 that will come into effect once PBS is established. Take the number of days that you will work in the next 12 months, multiply by .75, and multiply by your hourly. We're either giving them the next 12 months of duty period guarantee improvement for free or we're waiving the last 3 years.

You know it’s 4.5 per duty period or multiple day trips and 4 for day trips right? Do you work here?

Then you would have a poorly thought out argument.
First of all as someone already pointed out, 4:15 is not our min day, it's 4 or 4:30. Second, you would only look at days you are working that are currently below 5 hours. Then of those you may get up to a half hour more, unless they day is somewhere between 4:30-5:00 in which case you it would be less than :30.

it's pronounced BONE*US, because that is what's gonna happen when you take your payoff money

The point I was making is that for a "retro" payment, you could argue it fell way short in "making you whole" for all of the money you lost during the amendable period.

With a ratification bonus, it's simply a bonus of cash paid for "ratifying" the agreement- a sweetener.

looooooooll

A retro payment is a retroactive raise. Everyone gets paid based on the hours worked after the ammendable date. A signing bonus is used by dishonest companies to take full advantage of the RLA to screw their employees out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And continues to be industry standard because employee groups are simply too beat down to hold out for it.