tripled

basically the rate at which Sked’s could cover a trip. It used to be slower, now it’s very fast. Good economic efficiencies but it cost a LOT of qol for those pilots who chose to engage the schedulers by volunteering to fly. We gave it away for basically nothing in return and it could have been used for a lot of leverage to negotiate gains In other areas. Most frustrating is that the leadership who decided on the final terms seems to have ignored the scheduling committee recommendations and even more frustrating is that the decision-makers appear to have had very little familiarity with ARCOS and the trip coverage process. Totally blew it.

StoneQOLdCrazy

it’s called preemption. And it only applies to very narrow situations. Otherwise there would be no ability for airline pilots to use “state sick” laws, for just one example.
bud, you need a hobby in retirement. Maybe try law school? I don’t care what you do. Just stop posting misinformation here.

CBreezy

During Covid, one of the LOAs contained a provision that prohibited the company from "spamming" calls to all pilots for a single available trip. Pilots were upset, the company wanted a bunch of stuff during Covid to help ease the pain so they agreed to this. Basically, less than 12 hours notice, they could call up to 5 at a time. More than, they could call one. There was an automatic penalty for violation which was 2 hours of pay for each pilot in the bad batch.

Pilots caught on. Scheduling drives coverage like a 10 year old in a Miata. People were putting in slip requests just hoping they catch the company speeding. And they got caught a lot. So then company gets a little relief in the new contract and an additional day to run coverage. Then the severe understaffing crunch happens in the revenge travel boom era because crew resources thought Covid was going to be 2 decades long and were shocked everyone who told them they were wrong, were right. So now, a metric ton of premium flying is going out. But it's taking them A LONG time to cover. Like, a day for a trip. So they find a rarely used part of the contract called 23M7 that allows them to skip coverage order and allows them to call ANYONE available all at once to offer inverse assignments. The catch is, they have to pay the pilot that would have been awarded the trip single pay in addition to the double pay IA.

Problems: accepting a IA via phone put you in a queue to talk to a scheduler. There was no rights to a trip and is first come, first serve. Knowing this, pilots were calling scheduling asking if any trips were in IA and asking for them, even if they hadn't been called. After some success, pilots were looking at OT, seeing trips they wanted, then calling scheduling to tell them they'd do trip x even if they hadn't started coverage on it. Scheduling, screen flashing red like it'd fallen off a boat in GTA, accepted any med packs it could find. Only, they were cheating and there was no requirement to annotate that 23M7 had been used. And they rarely looked up who was the harmed pilot to pay them correctly.

So now, every pilot and their nosey spouse was filing a report to the scheduling committee any time they saw a IA. And the committee fell painfully behind. And since many pilots were not calling to notify the company of a grievance, the company was rejecting M7 payments because it was outside the 120 day window.

The union files a grievance and is convinced it will lose. So they go into dispute resolution and accept what many have claimed is an insulting offer. Effectively, the company gets to eliminate batch sizes. But it must promise to annotate any 23M7 use and are restricted from using M7 outside of 8 hours.

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All 5 Stages

Here's my post in the "23.M.7 not being documented" thread. Fun fact -- this batch size giveaway passed the MEC by a 9-8 vote, which is why C81 went through, and is going through, a recall election.

A5S

There is a sweet spot that gives the company cost savings, yet still results in earlier coverage ladder sequence for commuters without resorting to the chaotic IA process or the nuclear 23.M.7. ... not to mention the annoying ARCOS call-outs, which is a significant reason we negotiated batch size limits in the first place. Maybe that sweet spot is 15, or 20, or 25? Who knows. We may never know now.

What's frustrating is that DALPA didn't even try to negotiate a happy medium between the previously negotiated batch sizes and the current Unlimited. We just tossed the Miata keys to the company and said, "Here enjoy the $$ millions in cost savings. Please keep your promises, and report back to us how well you are keeping your promises."

Whoopsmybad

Didn’t the scheduling committee chair actually recommend the settlement?

ancman

In a nutshell, the effect of batch sizes forced the company to pay 300% to cover most premium trips (200% to an IA/GS pilot + 100% to a 23.M.7 pilot). That effect went completely unanticipated by management when they signed an LOA agreeing to batch sizes at the onset of COVID.

Paying 300% to cover trips was unsustainable for the company in the long term. In an effort to obtain free contractual relief, they gaslit ALPA and a portion of the pilot group into believing that their problem was actually our problem. They did so via three primary methods:

1. By telling us that the 23.M.7 process was abrogating seniority in assigning premium trips. This was true to an extent, but temporary.
2. By not paying the 23.M.7 pilot their 100% pay by default, forcing ALPA to use its manual resources to track and report violations. Only about 25-50% of violations were being discovered and paid at the time. More on this below.
3. By threatening to use 23.M.7 anytime they wanted, even weeks in advance. This was laughable because they were basically threatening to triple their costs on a routine basis.

Management knew that #2 was about to crumble, due in large part to automated enforcement software that was on the way. Our newly-signed contract gave ALPA direct API access to our scheduling system. A vendor was already under contract by ALPA to develop software that would utilize that access. Eventually, the software would find and report every 23.M.7 violation, eliminating the company’s ability to evade paying 300% for most premium trips. Management pressured ALPA for a rushed solution, knowing full well that this debacle was about to become far more expensive for the company.

ALPA filed a grievance, arguing that 23.M.7 was meant for emergency use only, not routine use. Management doubled down on #3 above. They successfully frightened ALPA into believing that they would lose in arbitration. The worst case scenario, ALPA believed, was that the arbitrator would give the company an unlimited ability to use 23.M.7 (i.e. pay 300% to cover trips) whenever they felt like it.

A very slim majority (9 out of 17) of our MEC members fell for it, deciding to forfeit before the issue ever reached an arbitrator.
In conjunction with the chairman, they proceeded to gave away hundreds of millions of dollars in negotiating leverage by voluntarily surrendering our hard-fought contractual batch sizes. In return, the company “promised” that they wouldn’t use 23.M.7 outside of 8 hours before report time. Said another way, the company promised ALPA that they would only pay 100% to 200% to cover most trips instead of 300%. We received absolutely nothing of value in return. Our most significant negotiating leverage in years was blown by ALPA overnight.

20Fathoms

Some great write-ups on this page but the bolded part is the real tragedy. Real leverage over the company is hard to come by and leverage that is acceptable to trade is rarer still. We had an absolute golden ticket and we pi$$ed it away for a song.

Trading it away is one thing, but the company would have paid a king’s ransom for it if we’d had half a brain as the status quo was unsustainable for them.

TLDR: They didn’t think we’d do that; they were paying 300% for trip coverage; they got mad; ALPA said “ok you can have it back if you pinky promise to follow the rules”.

Edit: Also there was no MEMRAT on this and I think we all know the reason why.

sailingfun

Not in the situation described. You can google a bunch of attempts to sue. Outside of the company nuking the union headquarters or a discrimination case the courts have consistently returned lawsuits to the arbitration process. The union actually has pretty good attorneys. Filing a lawsuit would delay arbitration and getting the pay issue solved.

crewdawg

Our lawyers must not be that great because they don't seem to mind the systemic pay issues that appear to be getting worse by the month. We keep getting promises that it's on their to-do list, but I'll chalk that right up there with the promise of never running hot again...

FangsF15

My understanding is that, given the binary choice of a take-it-or-leave-it offer, he recommended "take it", to solve the rampant IA out-of-seniority problem. It was not his idea, per se.

That said, he is running for C44 rep, and though I strongly disagree with this one thing, will enthusiastically vote for him for Rep. I don't need to agree with every position to recognize a strong candidate and support them.

And this is why so many folks were upset abou it, right here.