Pineapple Guy

Yes, you do. It's called a defined contribution plan, and I wish that's all they'd had when I was first hired. It's real money paid to you every payday, instead of the promise of money payable 30 years from now.

BTW, your retirement has already been improved from what was in place when you got hired.

Mine??? Not so much.

Pineapple Guy

BS - no one forced Ken to resign. And he's not THE Contract Admin guy. There are several.

Pineapple Guy

Whoever is feeding you this, has an agenda and is wrong. I won't let history be revised and have you try to turn this into a N/S battle. Feel free to PM if you want.

Splash

Are you sure?

Any resolution can be replaced or reinstated in the main session by a simple majority vote of the reps. The subcommittees can change them all they want, but the full MEC has the final say. Even resolutions that are opposed by every rep in the subcommittees still come to the floor before the main body.

The MEC Chairman has no vote, unless there's a tie.

caddis

Pineapple,

Please explain this to me. I am willing to listen but I do not think this statement is true.

Nosmo King

As I said in an earlier post, I am NOT familiar with DAL MEC Policy. I am familiar with fNW MEC Policy, but that no longer applies.

Having said that, the DAL Policy sounds very similar to fNW Policy on everything coming back out of subcommittee. That was not true at all MECs.in the past.

Another thing that happens is only the subcommittee gets to listen to committee/guest/attorney viewpoints on their assigned Agenda items. They usually come out with a recommendation/amendment. Very rarely will the full MEC hear everything that was said about an item in subcommittee, its usually a summary given by the sub chair. In my past experience those viewpoints make a huge difference in the perception of an agenda item and the way I would subsequently vote. It's one of the things I hated about ALPA BOD meetings and not being placed on the subcommittee that had the agenda items I was interested in debating.

There is also the time factor. People start getting tired towards the end of a meeting and give the recommendation of the committee more weight. Lots of things start influencing the attention to detail exercised on agenda items and their exact language(if any). Its always a dynamic, especially in times of above average activity like Section 6, merger, strike prep etc.

Nosmo King

You would think arbitrations and awards are clear, but...

Routes flown were used as evidence at fNW in the Roberts Award for REPLACEMENT AIRCRAFT being added into the quotas.

That is how the A330 ended up in the DC-10 quota.

It was also unsuccessfully used to get A330 in the 747 generic quota when A330 started flying transpac and south of NRT.

Seems like they are rolling the dice on 777s delivered this year AFTER the closure of ANC/MSP and the retirement of the 747-200.

Pineapple Guy

Caddis,

Those pilots who were hired at DAL or NWA after the DB plans were frozen have seen improvements to the DC plans that were in place on the day they got hired.

The rest of us, hired in a DB world, have had the retirement plan that was in place when we got hired dramatically reduced, via either termination or freeze. That was my point. Any of the pilots hired at NWA or DAL since 2006 have an excellent DC based retirement currently in place.

I'm simply trying to make the point that the new hires have nothing to complain about, when it comes to the retirement section of the contract. Can it go higher? Sure. But ramping up to 14% is a pretty good start.

TANSTAAFL

I though it had to do with a reduction in block hours of 744 and a subsequent increase in 777 block hours, not routes. fNWA lost 744 positions that fDAL gained on protected acft. I beleive the grievance is to rectify those percentage of block hours in the form of positions.

DAL 88 Driver

This is an excellent point. Many of our pilots don't realize or appreciate exactly what we have at DAL. Our Fidelity BrokerageLink setup allows us access to a much greater variety of investment choices than the vast majority of 401(k)/defined contribution plans at other companies. What we have is something that is a growing trend but is still fairly rare at this point.

It definitely sucks to lose a pension when you're halfway through your career. But, with the BrokerageLink and the boost I got from the note and claim, I (at age 50) am on track to have pretty much what I would have had with the pension. But, in this case, the money is mine and cannot be taken away through bankruptcy like the pension was! Now if we could just get some decent pay restoration (and therefore get those contributions amounts higher into the plans), then many of us (even the senior guys) could come out better than we would have had with the pension.

Of course, some will argue that the returns necessary to achieve success with our plans is not guaranteed. Well, a pension certainly isn't guaranteed either.... as we have all found out the hard way. And, like Pineapple said, it's a real no-brainer for the new guys. I just wish we had had this setup from the beginning for us older guys!