crewdawg

Not working out so great for MSP based pilots since the Delta family fought/won against family sick leave.



Lol right. Well before my time, but from my understanding, some made out ok, but many did not. I have to imagine having a bunch of banked time stolen from you, would shift your views a bit.

Gspeed

Found the chief pilot

Gspeed

sure didn’t sound like it but ok.

Buck Rogers

Right. So, for Tfork to insinuate that a NWA pilot that lost 2000 hrs of sick time that he earned by working might not be justified in also (Tfork's ASSumption) that that NWA captain would rail against people who don't work and want something for free. That was Tfork invoking a stereotype which is unwarranted divisivness.

BTW. The NWA pilots did get some sort of special provision (pay-out???) on their accrued sick leave after the merger. Somebody affected can probably add insight.

Buck Rogers

Well, let's see if I can unpack this for you.

Why do I care? Because I talk with my pilot kids about, among other things, life in the industry. The more insight and exposure I have on differing views, the better the conversations.

What constitutes sick leave abuse is not well codified in the PWA. It is certainly intricate and nuanced. Thus, there is a lot of room for interpretation. The DL sick leave system has been around much longer than IM SAFE.

The discussion started with APC pilots being offended by GFB calls and required sick notes being an affront to their integrity. Fangs mentioned a graph(bar chart) from 10 years ago with a visual display of months where sick leave occured. He got bludgeoned. To try to instill some facts into the conversation, I tried to get someone/anyone to define "sick leave abuse". Several pages of "how dare me"..."there is no sick leave abuse, nobody abuses sick leave" ensued. An attempt was made to expain that DL sick leave policy and the "use it or lose it" status is differnt than accruing 60-72 hours a year like other legacies. Different systems different results. My suggestion was if you want the GFB calls and Dr notes to disappear, then a push in the next contract to an accrual system would probably be appropriate.

Still there were no takers on attempting to define what sick leave abuse is.( As an interesting side note...sick leave abuse could also be when you do not use sick leave when not feeling"quite right" and one is in an accrual system UAL/AA).

Now to your absurd "Hookers and blow"....That's not as far fetched as you try to make it sound. Make it Vegas with debauchery and alcohol(legal) and you are on to something that might pass muster for a valid sick leave call. Just WTF am I saying/thinking? Well with IM SAFE my mental well being has to be taken into account. I could make the case that I was feeling stressed out and I needed to unwind with a mental health day. I'd tell the company to pound sand. What are they gonna do. It's your contractual earned right and IM SAFE might protect me. What's Delta to do...send me to a shrink(howed that work out for them). BTW....I just call and tell them "I'm sick". End of call. If they ask for a note or I get a GFB call, I don't bother with the details, just state "mental health, thanks for your concern, I'm feeling tip-top now."

One thing is evident. There are differing takes on what might constitute sick leave abuse. On one end of the spectrum, it's as Tfork thinks. If you call in sick and are not physically ill, that would be abuse(what I thought 35 years ago being ex-military). On the other end of the spectrum, there's your Vegas and debauchery example, anything goes and nothing can constitute "abuse" due to "mental health". That has a certain amount of validity too. Maybe both views can be right?

BTW. Good job on acknowledging my right to post on APC. Thank you. Now, humor me while I chide your ensuing flurry of body blows trying to impune my character( Shoot the messenger? ....stiffle my input??). You call it "stiring the pot", I think of it more as an Op-ed. Maybe try to broaden the APC echo chamber and perchance, get people to view things more logically and less emotionally.

Emotions like yours that suggest I'm "not imparting wisdom", I'm just, "yelling at clouds". I serve, "no benefit to the Delta pilot group". "I’m retired and bored AF so I’m gonna go post 5 or 6 times with a “parade of horribles” logic train on sick leave abuse because I have nothing else to do that’s fine, it’s just a little odd".

m3113n1a1

More logically and less emotionally? Dad, you're the king of emotion!

Buck Rogers

This from the guy who sided with NB and continually disparages Sailing for being "incorrect more than half the time" and me being envious or younger pilots(even though I have stated that due to my pilot kids, I'm really happy for them and their generation in the profession).

Facts vs fiction. You need some new material

Good input though....you added a lot to the convo.

NuGuy

It was jacked up, and how it was explained during the merger is lost to the mists of time.

Pre BK, NWA had an unlimited sick bank. You normally accruued 5 hours a month AND if you used no sick leave that month, you acrued another 7 hours. Thus in a "no-sick" month, you got 12 hours of sick leave. Had a clean year, and you got 144 hours, which rolled over. Many pilots had in excess of 2,000 hours. While many pilots had LOL or disability supplement plans, with even 1,500 hours, you could comfortably be out for more than 18 months at full pay, as an actual emplployee on the payroll (this make a difference!).

After BK, the cap was put in at 1,200 hours, but if you had more at the time, you were grandfathered in.

At the time of the merger, they took a portion of your bank over a certain cap. The "trade" for this was that Delta would pay part of the DPMA premiums. What most people don't know is DPMA actually has two seperate funds. One for the fDAL/post-merger DAL and another for fNWA pilots.

So, you were left over with whatever sick time you had after this "buy down", and THEN they subtracted the initial "Delta" contribution to the DAL sick leave program, so whatever you had, minus the DAL allocation for that year (eg 240 hours).

As an example, if you had 1,500 hours at the merger, your DMPA premium was reduced some percentage, and that left you with 1,200 hours. Then Delta took 240 hours to fill that year's bank, so you were left with 1060 hours. And that happened whether you used it or not. You literally could have been charged 240 hours for sick leave you never used.

Any remainder of your NWA sick leave is available as a disability top up benefit, which kicks in after DPMA.

Also not commonly known is every year after that, if a fNWA pilot calls in sick, not only is his DAL account debited, but is NWA account is as well. While not charged for refilling your Delta sick bank every year, your NWA bank is still debited for what ever sick leave you use, which now makes that sick leave unavailable for your disability top up.

2StgTurbine

What are the options? Call the CP and hope they rule in your favor? Get the trip dropped and lose out on the pay that you might need to help with the hospital bills?

I used state sick leave for my wife and it was such a pain. I still needed a sick note since I was in the verification window. Nothing like going back to the hospital and having a nurse fill out a form saying that my wife was sick. It would have been much easier for me to simply call out sick and go to the CVS and have them fill out a sick for me.

tennisguru

I would define sick leave abuse as using sick time when you are completely physically and mentally well so as to be able to come to work and perform this job. That is also nearly impossible to track since many disqualifying conditions rely on the feelings of the individual with regard to stress, tiredness, pain, etc that cannot be easily verified (if it can be verified at all) by any company representative or medical professional. The company will never define it because that traps them in a box of their own making, and again any "limit" is going to be highly subjective and practically impossible to enforce.

Say a pilot bangs out sick on a beautiful spring day and goes out on the boat with the family. Is that abuse, or was he feeling stressed out about family issues and needed a mental health break in order to have a fun family outing to get things straightened out?