Hey Jay,
Here's an easy way for you to make money. Honest. I'll bet you a thousand bucks ($1000 US) that you won't have a contract negotiated, recommended by you, and ratified by the time your tenure is up. Howzat?
It seems you didn't get the memo, so I'll enlighten you at the risk of appearing like a 3w light bulb in a one mile deep coal mine.
Management said the cost saving of the synergy was targeted at approximately $5m a day. That's $1.78B per year. Now they are on target for a $1.4B profit eeked out of a previous year's loss. So they have, without materially changing the flying, already gained more from the merger synergy than they had planned.
Ergo, THEY DON'T NEED YOUR COMPLIANCE OR APPROVAL. YOU ARE AN INTERESTED OBSERVER. And nothing more. They can run this thing, as is, ad infinitum. And you can bang your chest all you want and they will laugh all the way to the bank. Turning up the heat is plain stupid when you don't have the ammunition to fight the war.
You want to turn this into a USAir cesspit? Just keep it up. Keep up the rhetoric and the obstructionism. But when after your term we are still looking at this sorry assed contract of ours, that will amount to the best part of 88% of our annual salary YOU will have given away. The Delta plus one offer was a 22% pay raise for us (that's without any forward movement we could expect from the deal). It will have been 4 years that ALPA will have tossed that aside. That's 88%. gone forever. For those of to whom this represents a sole source of income that is a huge loss, and one that you are responsible for.
So the offer's on the table for a week from this posting.
Looking forward to hearing from you but I won't hold my breath.
Andrew, I've enjoyed what I've read on the blog so far. Just a question followed by a comment.
ReplyDeleteWhere or how did you calculate the above 88% number?
Last July this is what the UAL-MEC had to say about the "Delta plus one" offer.
Company Communications
The company has had the www.unitednegotiations.com website for quite some time but it has not been active, most likely due to the NMB warning to not negotiate in public. Recently they posted what was touted as management’s proposals from October of last year. We have to ask ourselves why the company would suddenly decide to negotiate in public in defiance of instructions from the NMB—especially when they agreed not to do so. The only answer is that they are in trouble as they would have to believe that their document would not play well with the line pilots. In reality, the summary presented does not portray what has been happening at the table and in fact leaves many negative details. In fact it is not the “Delta” contract since it contains the following provisions:
– Allows for 250 large RJs (essentially guts scope to pay for the rest)
– Many of the hourly rates would actually be a pay cut for CAL
– DAL has medical insurance on Day 1
– Vacation rules are less than we have now
– DAL had $500M in equity
– Doesn’t mention retro pay
– Doesn’t have DAL work rules
Also, my next door neighbor is a Delta pilot and his response was simply, "we are working under a bankruptcy contract, why would any pilot group use that as a standard."
Keep up the thought provoking blog.
David. JFK 767 F/O
The more this gets talked about the better it sounds:
ReplyDeleteSince our interim agreement has expired I propose we install the current CO contract for 1 YEAR.
1) We get to bargain as close to
a single unit as we can get without a combined seniority list.
2) We get to test drive their contract with no commitment to keep it if we really don't like it
3) With their contract comes their scope limits
4) Since it's a contract that's already on the property they would have a hard time justifying it's rejection.
5) We all get an interim raise
6) If the work rules are as miserable as we are led to believe sick leave usage will increase and since it will be a significant
change in working conditions we can argue that sick leave increases are due to the new work rules, not a job action.
7) After a year UA as well as UA ALPA can decide if they want to let it all die
8) It will show our good faith in bargaining.
I hope you will give this serious consideration. Maybe put it up for a vote. We seem to be stuck in a rut and I see no 'outside the box'thinking going on.
Bob