You mean the contract that both MEC's approved and 60% of the pilot group ratified?

 

With a gun to our heads. Yes that one.

 

No. I mean how the CAL negotiators were threatening to hold their breath and delay delay delay until and unless the UAL MEC acquiesced and agreed to pay banding.

They agreed in an attempt at a goodwill gesture early in the talks to get things moving and also, to show a cohesive front. I believe it was JB who threatened to hold the talks up. This was also before it crystalized that we were actually in tripartite negotiations. Now thats a recipe for a crap contract. And this of course was long before the CAL SLI presentation and its farcical attempt to deemphasize the WB disparity and to influence the SLI. Which we all know didn't work very well.

Ten bucks says that 99 percent of the UA guys thought that agreeing to additional pay banding was a boneheaded move. We had it shoved down our throats (747/777) during the bankruptcy and were determined to UNDO that this time around. So the current pay banding scheme lies at the LCAL MEC and JH (and his negotiating teams) feet.

You are free to believe whatever you choose. I only seek to perforate your assertion that because the contract was ratified that we approved PB. The situation changed significantly between the PB agreement and the contract ratification.

 

Not disagreeing with you, GF, but an additional factor affecting banding was the DAL JCBA which our parties (surprisingly) allowed to be used as the high-water benchmark for the UPA.

DAL 777/747 are also banded together, and our 787 and 767-400 pay at a higher band when compared to theirs.

Banding needs to be (disbanded) the next go around.

 

ABSOLUTELY!

We have semi decent pay rates, a nice 401 kicker and a significant disability benefit. Toss in one or two more picayune trinkets and much of the rest of the agreement is junk. Its full of weak language, conditional BS and is overly concessionary. If this place continues to print money and we pull a Casper Milquetoast again, I'm going to head straight to the Buffalo Trace and engage in full despair mode.

 

No, I fly the 737 for United

 

“Take it from me, there's nothing like a job well done. Except the quiet enveloping darkness at the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam after a job done any way at all.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

 

Why? This isn't gospel, it's opinion and there are different ways of looking at it. Both companies had banding at the merger announcement, you mentioned DAL bands (industry norm), and it was a part of the CALALPA openers in '08, before the merger. In any event, all we can do is make our desires known to our reps and vote on the next contract, but ascribing some type of unilaterally nefarious motives to our current pay bands is nonsense.

 

Coloring outside the lines is not tolerated by the regime.

 

Respectfully disagree.

Its not nonsense. Its fact. Read the SLI hearings. They SPECIFICALLY asked the arbitrators to count CAL 767-400 as a jumbo and UALs 757s as narrowbody because of pay banding. That right there PROVED why they did it. They were trying to massage the status and category weighting with OUR contract. This was specifically asked at a union meeting where the union LEC rep said "We are doing this for SLI purposes because contracts come and go but SLI lasts forever" which was taped by a Uhire who was in the meeting.

If pay banding is what "DAL" does then why does DAL pay Airbus more than guppy? And DAL certainly pays 757 more than guppy. Also NO AIRLINE bands 747s and 777s with 767s. Except us.

The creative pay banding was an SLI argument supporter, it failed the Status and Category sniff test, and now we have guys getting paid less than they should in the 757, 777, and 747s. So the reasons for the pay banding are moot because they didn't accomplish what was intended.