iLikeMoose

Would someone care to educate me with the controversy over batch sizes? Relatively new-ish, and of course have seen a lot about ALPA giving it up. I wasn't around to see what it was like before, and I am still somewhat clear on the issue with larger batch sizes is? Is it that it results in a bunch of nuisance ARCOS calls for GS that you don't actually have a chance of getting because you are so far down the list? Or is there an implication for how GS are assigned? Or is it just that something was changed that doesn't necessarily hurt the pilot group, but it was a change the company wanted and didn't wind up having to give up much for in return?

myrkridia

It's that batch sizes were negotiated for (in exchange for what exactly I don't know) and then given away for what is perceived by most to be of little or no value.

CBreezy

They are negotiated during the Great Covid LOA period and, I believe, were packaged as a quid for a company money saving quo. To give it up for almost nothing is what most people are most upset about.

FangsF15

Before Covid, ARCOS batch sizes were not a thing for GS (or next-day WS). This resulted in many folks getting middle of the night calls for a GS which they had no chance of actually getting, because 25 people senior/in front of the line were going to take it. There was a lot of complaints over how many 'nuisance' calls pilots were getting for legitimate GS requests. During Covid, LOA 20-04 (the "furlough Prevention LOA", and also established PS commuting) "established contractual guardrails on ARCOS call-out parameters, and improve call-out and batch size requirements". It started with a matrix of which side of 8 hours to report the trip was, as well as time of day (2300-0430 base time), and gave a 15 minute window before ARCOS would move on to the next batch.

Critically, it also included a pay/no credit of 2:00 for every pilot in a batch where said "matrix" was violated. There was at least one violation that paid out 300 hours of pay. CSers pretty regularly screwed this up, and it quickly became known that you should put in a blanket GS - even if you never had any intention of flying a GS ever - because it would result in 2-10 hours per month of extra pay for "RCOS" violations, and pilots had to do nothing other than fill out the GS template. It was like free money every month.

While this had the effect of only calling you when you had some decent chance of getting the GS you were being called about, there was an unintended consequence. Because SO many pilots had submitted a GS request (for the free RCOS pay), GS submissions went through the roof, and it bogged down the GS process. Sometimes, it would take 10-15 hours for ARCOS to finally find a pilot who could/would accept the trip. This frustrated the company at a time when the post-COVID revenge travel started, and they were short staffed already, and it caused obvious delays in covering a trip, or outright cancellation. However, it also frustrated a lot of pilots because it took so long for ARCOS to finally call, that even if you knew from looking at Open Time the call was coming, they could no longer "get there from here". Somewhere along the line, I seem to remember there was a slight revision to the 'matrix' to expand the batch size slightly.

So, when there was willingness on both sides to make some adjustments, ALPA had a HUGE thing of value to trade. And it was something we had already negotiated a quid to get. I don't know how many RCOS hours were paid out by the company, but it had to be tens of millions of dollars worth. Maybe hundreds of millions.

Separately, Inverse Assignments (IA) were being grossly abused by the company by bypassing ARCOS, citing 23.M.7. In addition, some unscrupulous pilots were calling CS to 'volunteer' for an IA, which harmed thier fellow pilots. Unbelievably, very few times were the company paying the "affected pilot" properly. I've heard ALPA schedulers estimate it as less than 25% of the time - and that's the ones they know about. So, the company was covering the trip but not paying for it IAW 23.M.7, stealing from the pilot harmed. ALPA filed a formal grievance 22-14. Resolution of these often take years, and without any guarantee of success (regardless of how ironclad the case is).

The MEC chair unilaterally negotiated away ARCOS batch sizes in exchange for a 'promise' to not use 23.M.7 until within 8 hours of report (they had previously used it waaaaay in advance which was not in the spirit of 23.M.7, nor the letter). The company also 'committed' to create a formal log each time they used 23.M.7. The MEC voted not to overrule the MEC Chair, effectively accepting the grievance settlement. There is more to that part, but it's beyond the scope of the question.

As others have said, the rub is not that ARCOS batch sizes went away (though there was criticism that it wasn't 'modified' somehow instead of just trashed, but supposedly that's all the company would consider). The rub is that we really didn't get a really valuable quid in exchange. And when the company (predicably) didn't live up to thier 'promise', it caused some righteous indignation amongst the peasants in the trenches for giving batch sizes away almost for free.

So now, we are basically back to the way it was before batch sizes and RCOS pay was a thing, yet we negotiated away something of huge value and didn't really get much of anything in return. There is no point in submitting a GS unless you are actually willing to accpet it.

crewdawg

In case you want the TLDR notes

- We expended negotiating capital to get batch sizes.

- We gave up batch sizes and got nothing of value in return.

- End of story

demon llama

Ok. So I thought "we gave away batch sizes reeeeee!" meant that the ARCOS callout used to just have a "batch" of 20 or so pilots who were called and senior enough to possibly get the GS. Some of the GS callouts I get have 100 pilots in the list. And when I'm P89 I don't want a phone call. So I use "auto-accept - Yes" and "auto-acknowledge - No" So I only get the call if I'm going to get the trip award.

But you're saying more that "we gave away batch sizes" really meant "we gave away extra ARCOS nusicance call pay," correct?

ancman

Yes, we gave away 2-hour RCOS pay credits. But more importantly we provided a MASSIVE cost savings to the company, at the expense of our negotiating capital, without receiving anything of value in return.

Prior to the settlement, the company had 3 costly options when covering a trip in a short-staffed category:

1. Follow the 23.N or 23.O coverage ladder properly. Doing so often took 24 hours or more, due to the sheer number of blanket slips and the requirement to call all eligible pilots in small 15-minute batches. That created costly delays and disruptions.

2. Follow the ladder, but ignore batch sizes and call hundreds of pilots at once. That often cost the company tens of thousands of dollars more to cover a single trip, as EVERY pilot who was called received a 2 hour RCOS credit.

3. Ignore the ladder completely, go straight to inverse assignment via 23.M.7, and assign the trip to the first pilot who calls. That required the company to pay TRIPLE the value of the trip.

All three of those options cost the company far more than the value the MEC extracted from the deal.

demon llama

Thank you. That helps clarify it for me greatly.

notEnuf

This is the key, they became so accustomed to running things "a little hot" and sending the September "apologoy/we'll do better next time" letter that they got greedy and it bit them. So the punitive language was working and motivating them to staff appropriately ...and then DH let them off the hook for nothing. The same can be said for PBs, the company doesn't like the punitive cost.

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

We finally had a monitarily punitive effect to change company behavior, which has been the goal of ALPA to garner compliance since before I was here. Then we tossed it aside for another empty promise (23M7 report) that still isn't being done and has no effect. When will we F'ing learn? If the company has a problem, they also have the means to fix it. They don't need ALPA to fix it for them. The longer they twist in the wind, the better the deterent effect next time. And what's the latest result? Oops, we ignored SCOPE again with the WNBA charter, our bad. We didn't mean to do that - pinky swear.

Whoopsmybad

Ok, stupid question about our antiquated systems, but where do you see your hotel information for CQ again? I can never remember or find it.