johnso29

Thanks for the info. Nice to know we've been beaten to submission.

DAL 88 Driver

I agree. BTW, thanks for your service.

As to the indifference you've experienced, here's what I think a lot of it is attributable to. When DALPA allowed our pay to be cut by a total of 42% and allowed thousands of our jobs to be outsourced, I think a lot of folks (including myself) lost significant confidence in them. (Yeah, I know, we voted for it. But DALPA pushed it and sold it extremely hard.) Then, when Delta came out of bankruptcy, and DALPA showed no plan or even an expectation for restoration, I think a lot of folks (including myself) lost even more confidence in them. Now, we have gone almost HALF A DECADE and STILL no plan or even expectation for restoration. My confidence in DALPA at this point is basically zero. In fact, my voting reps are so "in the tank" with low expectations that I've completely disengaged from providing input to them.

Now, I submitted my survey very early on in the process. I'm just not one to give up completely... and in the grand scheme of things, the survey just didn't take that much of my time. But I think what you're seeing is a lot of guys who have given up completely and they just don't care anymore. Certainly, some of the fault lies with those individuals. But I attribute the greatest amount of the fault to a lack of direction and inappropriate leadership from DALPA. If DALPA had made our objectives clear from the start (and those objectives didn't include accepting what we have now as a new baseline), I'm 99.99% sure we would be seeing a much higher participation rate in this survey. Anyway, just my "2 cents"...

johnso29

I was told that DTW was 2nd to last in participation as of Oct 21 FWIW.

Bucking Bar

As we have outsourced our work, our bargaining leverage has decreased. We now represent maybe half of Delta's productive capacity. When we come to the table with half the leverage we used to enjoy, we can expect diminished results.

In the past decade scope has been a leading indicator.

Our current MEC holds the hope to turn things around.

LeineLodge

They are Golden only in the sense that Training Planning cannot schedule you for CQ on any of those days. They have nothing to do with RES golden days. CQ Golden days apply equally to REG and RES pilots as all CQ Training is pre-awarded and loaded onto your schedule before you bid for a month in PBS. As such, PBS has no idea (and doesn't care) if you will be a REG or RES pilot because the monthly schedule bids haven't been run yet. Clear as mud?

You bid them in iCrew and I think the montly bidding timeline/deadline just changed a little bit with LOA 29. The full explanation is on a PBS notepad under the crew resources tab on Deltanet, but I think you have to have them in by the 21st* with your EARLY/MAY/MUST bids entered into PBS by the 31st at 1800 ET*.

Rough Timeline of Bidding Dates (From the Crew Resources Page)

December CQ Bidding

December CQ Golden Day bids must be submitted prior to October 21st
December CQ Bid Window Opens: October 25th 1800E
December CQ Bid Window Closes:October 31st 1800E
December CQ Bid Results are Posted NLT 0800 November 5th

You can see the CQ Results for December are posted (pre-awarded to your PBS calendar) by 0800 on the 5th which not coincidentally is when the PBS bid window for December bidding opens. Again, you won't know if you're a RES or REG pilot until sometime around the 15th or 16th (but No Later Than 17th) of November. You then will bid your RESERVE GOLDEN DAYS by the 19th* of November for the December schedule. Again, clear as mud???




*check it out yourself, don't want to give bad info. I'm gonna look before mid-November as my CQ comes up in JAN as an early month.

roadrunner65

My survey was completed last week. Not to get into too much detail, but here were some of my "deal breakers"
*35% min pay increase from the start, but expect MD88 to exceed LUV rates, and larger acft to go north from there based on seats.
*SCOPE--decrease number of allowed >51 seat jets, plus possible restrictions on rj flying such as 500 mi distance limit, no hub to hub flying, sunset current contracts.
More limitations on codeshare flying. Scope is issue #1 for me and I communicated that to them in the survey.
*Min daily guarantee--Any Delta calendar day, ie. DH, CQ, 30 hr layover, etc. pays min guarantee. Period, no exceptions. Way too many 3 day trips with 11 hrs of pay.
*Reserve--75 hrs/mo and 14 days off. Rsv paid the same as a lineholder, put some seniority back in the system re: assigning trips
*Vac--needs to be paying way more than 3 hrs/day.

LeineLodge

This defeatist, poor-me mentality is exactly what's going to get us a crappy contract. We need to stop moping and blaming someone else for what's gone wrong in the past decade. ALPA certainly had a hand in it, but there were quite a few outside forces influencing the process as well.

Now we finally have an opportunity to alter our course, and a large portion of the pilot group can't even be bothered to spend a few minutes filling out a survey!

The company is making money hand over fist and knows that we expect significant recognition in this next contract. If we're too weak, stupid or lazy to ask for it then we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. The laundry list of BS reasons for not getting on board and pulling in the same direction is just that, BS.

Even if you're the staunchest DPA supporter out there, hedge your bets. Continue to provide at least the minimum required participation (like filling out WHAT YOU WANT) while trying to create a better alternative union. I'm fine with that, but don't just give up. For better or worse, our cart is tied to ALPA for now, and our success and paychecks will depend on how well ALPA can do. You never know, they may actually achieve the unthinkable (in the DPA crowd's vision) and help us negotiate an industry leading contract. One thing is for certain though: Without some minimum participation from the pilot group, ALPA will not have the leverage to achieve what guys supposedly want (but apparently aren't willing to get off the couch for.)


**This rant was in no way directed at you 88. I admire your continuous beating of the restoration drum and just happpened to quote your post that was referencing the rampant apathy.

DAL 88 Driver

"Hope" is a lousy strategy. What are they doing to turn things around? And why aren't we hearing anything about it?

buzzpat

Sounds almost identical to mine roadrunner. I asked for vacation to be paid at the min daily guarantee.

Imapilot2

Will our profit checks be bigger or smaller this time