Beewatcher2

To understand what can go wrong with this TA you have to pretend that you are Scott Kirby. His first goal is to get pilot costs WAY down. Right now you have a situation where lineholders are averaging line values of 80-90 hours a month while tons of reserves are getting paid an average of 73-76 hours for sitting at home. If this gets ratified, he will lower all LPA’s to match the MPG of their respective tiers. He thereby has greatly increased the number of lineholders in all categories and reduced unproductive reserve pilots. Group 1 pilots get LPA’s of 60 hours or less. The reserves in this category will now have an MPG of 60.8 hours, which has reduced their pay 17%. Group 2 pilots will have their LPA’s built at 52 hours. The reserves in this category will have their MPG set at 52.7 hours, which lowers their cost by 28%. Group 3 will have their LPA’s built at 35 hours, which gets the reserve MPG down to 36.5 hours, which is a 50% reduction. Most lineholders will struggle to get their LPV higher unless they are in the very top of the category. Open flying will be the new premium time. There is a false belief that because MPG doesn’t matter much to lineholders now that it won’t matter in the post TA world. This is incorrect. There will be a lot of extra lineholders chasing very little open flying. Most lineholders will end up getting paid close to MPG. This is the TROJAN HORSE of this whole TA. As bad as reserve pilots pay is being cut, the system wide average lineholder’s pay reduction will be greater (far greater than 17%, 28%, or 50%). If the average line holder usually was flying about 80 hours per month and his pay goes to MPG his cut will be roughly 25%, 35%, or 56%. Think about that point for a moment. The furloughs (the bottom 2k) will still happen on 1 June but Scott gets to keep this "MPG flex thing" going for another 17 months. He will get very good at spreading the flying around so as to minimize overall payroll. Scott knows that even coming out of this we will be lucky to be a close to 70% and it’s going to be a long slog particularly on the international front. The 2k pilots cut on 1 June won’t be coming back until mid 2023 at the very earliest. Training costs have been avoided and the company has done much better with all this “MPG flexibility”. The 5% pay raise requires 4 consecutive quarters of profits and by then if the pilots don’t have a new contract there will be labor unrest. This might actually buy another year (stall) of negotiations. I suspect when ALPA came to the company to talk about furlough mitigation the company had this TA already written. In fact I think they wrote it in April. The “we are overstaffed by 7000 pilots” and “we will be poised for a quick rebound “was all part of the sales job. Who do you trust to be the better negotiators? If there was some real upside to the pilots on the backside (increased profit sharing, B plan contributions for profit sharing, stock options or no furloughs) I could possibly be on board but LTD was already in the next contract and we cost share a good chunk of that anyway. I think the company probably told the union this costs them more than a straight furlough but I really doubt this. Did Goldman Sachs analyze this? This buys the bottom 2k nine months and possibly saves the next thousand or so a short furlough but in the end they might have been better with a short furlough with furlough pay and a return to full pay. I hope I’m wrong but…

ELAC321

That's that largest single paragraph I've ever seen.

Jaded N Cynical

Using Paragraph Breaks Correctly

1. When you begin a new idea or point.
2. To contrast information or ideas.
3. When your readers need a pause.
4. When you are ending your introduction or starting your conclusion.

Definition and Examples of Paragraph Breaks in Prose

www.thoughtco.com

Beewatcher2

The cliff notes:

There is a false belief that because MPG doesn’t matter much to lineholders now that it won’t matter in the post TA world. This is incorrect. There will be a lot of extra lineholders chasing very little open flying. Most lineholders will end up getting paid close to MPG. This is the TROJAN HORSE of this whole TA. As bad as reserve pilots pay is being cut, the system wide average lineholder’s pay reduction will be greater (far greater than 17%, 28%, or 50%). If the average line holder usually was flying about 80 hours per month and his pay goes to MPG his cut will be roughly 25%, 35%, or 56%. Think about that point for a moment.

worstpilotever

ok, I thought about it. Now what?

Beewatcher2

read it again...

Sunvox

I read it . . . twice.

It's the same nonsense being spouted by AW and KK on the other forum.

You are making assumptions about the future that are simply not knowable. No one knows when a vaccine will be available to the masses, and no one knows how the public will respond in regards to travel so no one knows what Scheduled Block Hours will be next summer. What we do know is that if levels are above 70% of 2019 then the TA is done and MPG is back to normal.

What we can surmise about the opposite scenario is that if travelers do not return then UAL like the entire industry will need to massively resize and furloughs that go beyond August 2016 hires are highly likely and again the TA will be dead. A scenario wherein travel remains below 70% of 2019 and UAL furloughs only 2007 pilots and continues to keep a surplus of thousands of pilots on hand is almost impossible to imagine except in the minds of the fear mongering CONs desperately trying to incite an emotional No vote among pilots.

Is what you say a possibility? I suppose anything is possible, but then so is my winning the lottery next week. It's possible, but it's really unlikely.

For the record I can think of several good reasons to vote no that do not include unlikely assumptions about the future:

1) Industry leaders expected travel to rebound by October and they were wrong so expectations about 2021 may just as well be misplaced and so taking a pay cut to forestall the highly probable furlough is a bad gamble.

2) Keeping surplus pilots on the payroll until next June is a $1-2 billion dollar expense at the most. If Kirby really believes what he is saying the company could pay for this on it's own.

3) This is socialism at it's finest, and my guess is most pilots, whether senior or junior, do not support the philosophical idea of "spreading the peanut butter more evenly" so why vote for a socialist TA that might lead to more socialist ideas in future contracts.

4) ALPA is making an attempt to control the economic reality of the industry. Have they ever been successful at changing industry economics in the past.

oldmako

Thank you for the great post and explanation. I judged it based upon its content.

The Trojan Horse will likely soil this place for a long time.

Halon1211

HulkaBurger, are you here??

ReadOnly7

Probably flying today....for the company he works for....which isn’t this one.