You are right. never though of that. i recall a while back where Abbott and Starley leaked rates at a flight instructor meeting and this info got out intentionally in an effort to under-cut the union. the net result was about 3 weeks of insanity in having ALPA put out fires started by the company. it was done to intentionally break the leverage of the NC and take them away from the table. it was the company's best and final offer so to speak. But, in reality, it was just a ploy to undermine the unions efforts on behalf of all the pilots. The scab club and friends of fred club in the training department was used as a pawn to bypass ALPA and negotiate directly with the pilots. Shame on them!!! The company simply "aplogizied" and on we went once the pilots pushed back. I think we got all of the pilots to get new bag tags "my negotiating committee speaks for me." result: ALPA won, management lost. Pilot group became more unified. It was very refreshing, and management had egg on their faces.

 

They are definitely out of touch. trouble is, they don't know what that means.


This is just business to them. they probably realize they don't have the right talent running the operation and/or critical parts of the relationship managing parts of the operation. If they can't or won't get deals with MX or INFLT, that's because they lack the human resources to drive results there. Their talent pool is low and their ability to manage relationships among employee groups is poor. Result: employees feel crappy about their work place, their managers, their company, and their career path.

Mr. Munoz had better focus on acquiring and retaining talent to manage the relationships that matter: His front line employees.

If he were "in touch" he would have used his influence on the board to get jeffey to step up to the plate and fix what needed to be fixed. Mr. Munoz, may or may not be a nice guy, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know. He had better figure out who can get things done and who can't. If they can't cut it, then they need to be culled from the herd. Instead of employing lawyers to figure out how to break our contract he should hire people to figure out how to comply with our contract. That would go along way into proving his good faith and good will towards the line pilots.

He's apart of the same club that's been breaking our contract for the last three years as far as I am concerned. Out of touch....NAH. He's in touch all right. He knows what Jeff's been all about and he's been going along with it.

 

I stand corrected. It didn't take many post past yours for some not so loyal unionist to start rolling over for the money. I still think the majority will hold for fixing the current contract and improving QOL issues along with raises and not just jump for a company carrot.

I'm for letting the MEC do their job. There has been no official money offer being made and we have clowns saying take it. WDTCF?

 

Xactly. As I asked on page 2...What's the average time after amendable date for a new contract? (at least 2-4 years is about right). Under RLA, contracts never expire. They just become amendable. If the company wants to amend the UPA early, rock on! Call it an extension, or a new 2 year contract...whatever. Bring it on. Let's see it.

 

That sums it up nicely. And after reading it I can't see how they would do one without the other. New pay rates would have to extend the contract amenable date. To do otherwise would simply be a good will gesture, not something I can imagine is in the corporate playbook.

 

It has nothing to do with talent and right people. It's business!
The longer they stretch it, the better chances they have for lower expectations. At this time, pilots have enormously high expectations, UA makes record profits and has no arguments to counter. If they wait a bit, they pay themselves bonuses for performance and perhaps economy will be weaken so expectations will be lower.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

Indeed, money isn't everything. But C2000's defined benefit was a hell of a deal, and so was "vacation override".

The latter meaning, you can NEVER get the time back you spent at work, away from the family, hobbies, passions, whatever. Vacation override gave a metric crap ton of that.

 

Vacation override was a smoking deal, which will never come back. It was nice, while it lasted. We are stuck being productive pilots. The market simply won't let us survive any other way.

Defined Benefit plans. Probably the same. But 3 billion in stock buybacks would have sure looked better being put into the companies old A plans.

One of the reasons contracts take so long to negotiate, is all the participating parties are profiting by its' delay. The company gets us to work for less, and dozens, if not a few hundred ALPA guys get 90 hours a month, for YEARS, staying at the Ritz, full per diem, to negotiate. Every hear the joke about a divorce lawyer not wanting a quick and easy divorce? It is the same.

For industry standard pay raises, and maybe a few other enhancements, I would prefer to simply extend the current contract as far out in the future as possible. The only losers during contract negotiations, are us.

 

I was hired 20 years ago. In that 20 years, I have had an industry standard contract for about 5 years. The rest were below industry standard.

The current one is industry standard. I would like it to continue, as long as possible, with industry standard pay raises along the way.

Spending years in negotiations, while NOT getting pay raises, puts us below standard, again.

 

Yes, I agree with all that, but I also wish to point out while it's certainly just business, it will take talent and the right people to run this airline. It will take the right people to negotiate contracts, but seriously, we are doomed if we can't get good people in there to save the airline (again). I don't like our long term prospects for success with the current talent pool in the executive suite.