Bye Bye ,Leverage
 

I’ve argued the safety issue of forced upgrades (which to me is the greater concern), but I think those who are brushing that element aside are also overlooking what a terrible negotiating decision it is. The company has always had free rein to do with NH FOs as they please, but their need to fill CA positions in parity has often worked to our advantage. For example: consider the large growth we’ve seen in mid continent hubs over the past couple of years. This has come largely because, although the company could send all the NH FOs to SFO & EWR, they couldn’t fill the CA seats. This forced them to build more flying out of places like DEN & IAH where more of our pilots want to live. (Heck, we actually got a FL base- which we’ve been whining about for decades- purely because the company couldn’t staff EWR voluntarily.) While ALPA has been encouraging the company to do this for a long time, the company has been reluctant to do it because it costs more $$$. Finally, they realized they had to pay what it cost because they had no alternative. I.e., send flying where the pilots want to be or have no captains to do the flying.

Now they have a much cheaper & more efficient alternative- send as many NH FOs & CAs as they want to the undesired hubs. Pilot desirability now has no impact on how & where they build flying.

In essence, we’re creating a new subset of the pilot group-prospective crews- that will do the work we don’t want to do for cheaper. Today, if none of us wants to sit RSV in SFO, there is pressure on the company to improve RSV rules or commuting benefits; or build more flying where our pilots live. Tomorrow their solution will just be to send full NH crews there.

This will give the company a massive advantage in all forward negotiations. Any time we put pressure on them that the pilots want X, they will know that there’s a crew out there willing to go without X just to get on property. (That has always been true of FOs, but once it is also true of captains, the company’s incentive to appeal to our requests will drop to zero.) Want RSV improvements? Nah, we’ll just get NHs to sit RSV. Commuter benefits? Not when we can just send NHs to the undesirable hubs. Restrictions on reassignments? You guessed it. The incentive to open- & maintain bases like MCO completely dries up when the company can simply staff EWR with NHs. Today we’re negotiating against the company. Next cycle we’ll be negotiating against every pilot on the street who wants to come to UAL.

I gotta hand it to Kirby- he’s been playing chess against our checkers this whole time. Delay, delay, delay. Stash $$$ in a mattress while he wears us down; then once he has a big enough retro check to wave under our noses, ask for forced upgrades & sign quickly. (Isn’t it interesting how the one thing in this contract that is a major concession is the very thing that was absent from all polling & negotiations updates?)

Right now we feel like we’re getting a lot of what we asked for, but I think the time will come when we realize what we gave up to get it.

100% - filler

I agree, 100%.

Devil’s advocate: it’s ultimately not good for the pilots if they thwart substantial growth of the airline.

This didn’t even make my top 100 list of things I care about in the contract.


We wanted Delta money, we got a single work rule that doesn’t apply to a single one of us on property closer to Delta’s rules (no minimum Delta hours required to upgrade).

This is not an unreasonable take. If a not insignificant subset of our pilots is happy sticking it out in the WB right seat for 20+ years until they can jump the trash can, (and yes I look at those lines and it can be a great QOL so I get it), then there has to be some reasonable backstop that fills NB CA seats if we don’t fill them (keeping in mind the paid move provisions, removal of freezes and other improvements, etc all activate in this TA before the accelerated CA provision can kick in). We value the number of widebodies we fly. It’s fantastic. Do you think we’ll take the 100 787 options if we can’t staff the NB’s to get pax to them? I don’t think the solution is mini pilot bases in everyone’s favorite outstation or positive space for all. I would have been happy with a greater pay split between CA/FO to incentivize things but we seem to pattern bargain there.

There has to be a semi-same way to fill seats and this is one viable way. Freezes are waived before it happens (a plus), paid CA moves happen (a new incentive), and the training and flight hour requirement is still more stringent than Delta’s (we seem to remember every moment where we lag Delta with laser precision while forgetting every moment where we’ve got better contract wording).

It's an apples to oranges comparison comparing min requirements for forced upgrades to min requirements to voluntary upgrades. Not even close to the same thing.

You could also get forced to Guam as a NH. I’d call that substantially worse if you and your family are living on the east coast and not able to move there.

Ah yes, the old “gotta see it from the company’s perspective”. A classic in one-sided negotiations. They would have paid for captains, but we told them they didn’t have to.

If those incentives are so great, why does the company need the forced upgrade provision? It’s basically an open admission that what they’re offering is below market value.