Wilfortina

I understand this logic I guess, but after a shorter duration then we don’t get any more raises…so unless we get full retro then we spend more time behind the pay curve, as it were

OtterPilot

They seem to be focused on slicing up the "pie" differently. Grow some balls and go get a bigger "pie"!

Best negotiating environment in 30 years. We deserve something better than a tumi bag.

Hedley

Personally, I’d be willing to give up the suitcase for better work rules and pay that exceeds inflation. We can sell it to the company as a concession, just like the Tumi TA was sold to us as “industry leading”.

You’re absolutely right. The regionals are getting huge raises and Kirby needs to be able to staff the training department or his expansion will fail. If we don’t take advantage of this kind of leverage and tell the company to get back in the kitchen and bake a bigger pie, then we probably deserve what we get.

Lewbronski

A possible point of hope is that the NMB may, and I stress may, be turning over a new leaf. I say that based on the fact that, earlier this year, the NMB shifted from a 2 to 1 Republican majority to a 2 to 1 Democrat majority. Likely as a result of that, the consortium of railroad unions that filed for mediation in Jan 2022 was released from mediation in June 2022. That’s unheard of. That’s an incredibly short stay in mediation compared to past precedent. The railroad unions represent more than 100,000 employees and 30% of the nation’s freight capacity.

Typically, unions have had to stay in mediation much, much longer than that. In 2010, the NMB said that the average length of mediation cases between 2004 and 2008 was 758 calendar days. That doesn’t mean they had been released after that amount of time, it just means that that was the average length of time in mediation. To get released usually takes even longer.

RomeoHotel

With zero history of full retro it would stand to reason that after receiving 2 years of minuscule pay raises we would go back to receiving nothing for the following 4-6+ years…
Get a quality long term deal now while we have leverage…

The crazy logic that a short deal gets us back to the negotiating table sooner only makes sense if we sign an inadequate deal…

SquawkIdent

(Not directed at you Axl, just piggybacking on your comment)

It's very much worth remembering that the contract we're working under now in 2022 is itself a 2 year contract extension from 2016.

There are several parallels from the 2016 extension to our situation now; the company had critical problems that they needed solved quickly (FRMS, FDP extensions). They wanted a quick deal and promised us early openers on the next deal.

The extension was TA'd in late 2015 and ratified in early 2016 which extended the amendable date to 12/31/19. Section 6 opening letters on the subsequent deal were to be exchanged as early as May, 2018.

Once Kirby was CEO, the parties exchanged a Negotiating Protocol Agreement on 11/14/17 which envisioned negotiating, concluding, and executing an amended UPA no later than December 2018. The NPA is an interesting read and available on the UAL ALPA website. Check out paragraph C5 (public communication regarding negotiations) and F1 (the parties seek to reach agreement without the need for the NMB).

Opening letters were exchanged on 3/1/18 and negotiations commenced. Needless to say, the rest is history and a seamless agreement was not reached.

Once again, the company has critical problems they need to fix now and Kirby is literally saying "trust me" that we'll be taken care of on the next round. But we've seen that the company has no problem dragging its feet once their problems are solved. For these reasons, I'm not a fan of doing a short and limited agreement.

AxlF16

If your concern is that this is really a LOA masking as a TA then I agree. I was specifically addressing the duration in general.

Hedley

That’s one of my concerns. I’m also concerned that our MEC allowed so many concessions for what is basically just a little add pay. The duration is also a concern. To borrow the negotiation committee’s phrase, “when you look at this through the company’s eyes”, having an agreement incentivize the full staffing of the training department for the expansion solves their problem and severely erodes their need to return to the table. I don’t think we need a short term contract and then quickly come back and hit them up for more after their motivation has been satisfied. I get the theory. We move the needle, Delta tops us, and then we go back and pattern bargain off of that. It’s just a hard sell for me considering that any short term agreement will solve their training issues and getting them to come back to the table could prove to be difficult.

awax

Not only that, the railway workers were subject to a PEB and the PEB’s recommendation was give them 7% raises, etc…

AxlF16

i completely agree.