Just for comparison, I got $2347 less PS last year than the year before. How is that possible when I had identical W2s for both years, yet the total PS money was $225 millions more than the year before.
Our contract had PS language that United did not follow and then refused to provide the data.

 

You are most definitely not part of the all about me club. You highlighted one of the complaints coming from the yes voters.

 

One part of a unified single pilot group (for the purposes of a joint TPA) got money outside the TPA that another part of the same pilot group did not get.

As I said, to tie it to the settling of a minor grievance was simply to give the company plausible deniability that it was really for public consumption on Feb 14 that the merger was going smoothly.

Pardon me, it was the 767 and I believe it was regarding 10 of them. Estimates were that we had a slim chance of winning it and if we did the penalty to the company would have been less than a million dollars. We "leveraged" this for $40m in profit sharing. Either we were grievance geniuses or something else was afoot. When has the company ever rolled over for millions of dollars to the pilots. Heck, they'll miscalculate our pay by a dime knowing that we won't get through the Inception-like hall of mirrors that is our pay claim screen, and precharge for a buddy pass so when the buddy doesn't get on the flight the Flying Together refund process is like going to the DMV in Havana.

 

I'm not sure why we are arguing about this....

Hopefully the company will have to cough up a large sum of money to make the L-UAL pilots whole. Then we have ALL won. I was happy that L-CAL pilots were able to rip $40 million out of Jeff's pocket. Hopefully we can do the same through this grievance. Lord knows we all deserve it.

 

I believe that the UAL grievance was filed, not because CO side got the proffit sharing, but that may have been a contributing cause, but because UAL did not follow their own rules paying out the profit sharing to the LUAL pilots. Hence the reduced checks in 2012 from 2011. The CO deal was just salt in the wound.

I do not begrudge anything any employee group gets from Jeffy. Bad timing.

 

So did the LUAL pilots receive profit sharing in 2012 for 2011 profits??

 

Yes, it's was in their contract indefinitely. CAL's contract sunsetted profit sharing so we didn't have it, but we got it back in the TPA, but it was sunsetted there too! Brilliant! JCBA has it and it is not sunsetted.

 

Yes, we got profit sharing for this last goaround, but UAL made more money, and half the check, hence the grievance.

 

Just a question since I don't know the answer:

Did the UAL contract have a clause in the pilot contract that stated that the company could not change how the profit sharing "pool" was determined? I'm not talking about how the pool money is divided up (i.e. there was a formula in your contract that says exactly how much of the pool you were entitled to and how it was to be divided). I'm talking about the actual corporate profit sharing plan document. Did your contract have a clause that stated that UAL could not change how they determined profit sharing for the entire company until you have a new CBA?

Here's what I mean. The CAL contract stated that pilots would get profit sharing for the period of the contract so long as the company made a profit and gave it to other employees as determined by the profit sharing plan. That did not mean the company couldn't change how the pool was determined.

Originally, after the concessions, the plan called for profit sharing to be divided up based on two equal portions: 50% of the pool would be distributed based on the amount each work group gave in concessions (as an example if pilots gave 60% of the concessions they would get 60% of this part of the pool). The other 50% of the pool was determined based on a person's individual earnings vs all wages paid (as an example if I made $100,000 and the total employee wages was $1 billion I would get 0.0001% of this part of the pool). So this is how it was paid out for awhile.

Then, I believe when Jeff took over on the L-CAL side, the corporate profit sharing plan was changed to everyone sharing the pool based on relative wages to total employee compensation. The pool was just one pot of money again with everyone sharing it as determined by their earnings. 15% of pre-tax profits was put aside and then divided up. It went to this method because we had moved past the "concessionary" era (riiiight!) and the company wanted to look forward.

So, yes, the company changed the profit sharing plan document but we still participated. Now in your PS plan in your contract you had a formula to determine the amount you got from the pool but did anything dictate how the company was to determine the money put into the pool? When Jeff took over for the combined company and they made one profit sharing plan for all UCH employees did that change how the pool was determined and therefore could THAT have resulted in a lower payout for the UAL pilots even using the same formula in your contract?

I hope I was asking this clearly enough. I'm just curious.

 

I will try and dig up the contract language and post it.
Lets not forget that we had two PS distribution since the merger (2010 and 2011). The first distribution was done correctly, our payout was based on our JCB as was yours. No issues there. The second payout, with a much larger amount for PS yet the same pool of employees, the sUAL pilots PS check were way less than the prior year. Again I had Identical W2s for both years. The only explanation that I find plausible is that for 2010, sCAL and sUAL still had separate earnings. For 2011 UCH earning accounting were for a single airline.