Moak Set Us Up?
08-24-2015, 04:24 PM
#1
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jun 2015
Position: CA
Posts: 357
Moak Set Us Up?
I just got done reading the analysis of sick leave by Phil Farrell (I will post further down on this thread). His assessment is much more believable than the dog dung our union was spouting during the rush to "vote yes" for TA2015.
At some point a sane person has to ask themselves why our union has been so dishonest during this process. The spin they disseminated in so many details and vitriol they now spew defending the indefensible.
Let's review the facts and see where this leads us:
- Moak surrounds himself with a small circle of "YES MEN" that help him quickly climb the ranks at DALPA.
- Moak soon becomes cozy with Delta management (attending management kid birthday parties) and subsequently selling the pilot group on his engagement/appeasement strategy. His leadership style and message cause apathy and a feeling of helplessness among the membership. We must "go along to get along!"
- Moak says he will not run for ALPA president then goes back on his word finding his way to ALPA national. By this point he's mastered the art of union politicking. He's able to use his close knit henchmen to clear the path. They attack and vilify anyone who doesn't toe the line. His ties with Delta management are further galvanized as Mr. Moak works with the A4A on national initiatives.
Mr. Moaks words (below) from a Bloomberg interview raise eyebrows with pilots, with some calling for his resignation. Those within the "inner circle" state that he misspoke and defend him. Mr. Moak never walks back his damaging words.
“This is really a good story,” ALPA President Lee Moak said Tuesday during a visit to Bloomberg Businessweek in New York, part of a quick tour to assure Wall Street analysts that ALPA’s contract demands won’t prove onerous to airlines. “I almost can’t stand it, it’s so good.”
Pilots now see themselves as collaborators with management—they increasingly lobby alongside airline executives in Washington. That, says Moak, deepens the working relationships. “All of a sudden, you find yourself on the same side of 95 percent of the issues,” he says.
“There will be a business discussion of pay as it relates to revenue,” Moak says. “You can argue about $2 or $2.05, and that matters to the crew member,” but “you’re working on the margins” on the new contracts, he says.
“The employees are now coupled to the airlines,” says Moak, a Delta captain who is stepping down at year’s end after four years as president. Moak contends that ALPA pilots at the larger carriers enjoy what he calls “mature, good contracts” already. Radical overhauls aren’t in the cards, he says.
- During the Q and A of an earnings call, when asked about the pilots, Richard Anderson declares with some measure of confidence "Labor risk is off the table".
- Moak leaves office and soon after starts Moak Consulting Group.
- Moakist use "roll call" to remove King and put Donatelli in office.
- Moak is granted an unusual leave of absence, while remaining on the seniority list. Nobody knows what he is up to.
- The pilots are presented with an early, albeit concession laden TA. Someone beyond Donatelli and the "inner circle" orchestrate a plan to push this concessionary contract through, including a reduced window and full court press? If yes, who were they listening to?
Given the above information and Moak's willingness to public sell his fellow pilots down the river, we need to take seriously the possibility that Moak's leave of absence was approved allowing to execute on his first big "consulting contract". Being retained by Delta Air Lines to orchestrate the selling of a concessionary contract. To utilize his deeply embedded yes men to help him push it through.
Plausible? What are your thoughts?
At some point a sane person has to ask themselves why our union has been so dishonest during this process. The spin they disseminated in so many details and vitriol they now spew defending the indefensible.
Let's review the facts and see where this leads us:
- Moak surrounds himself with a small circle of "YES MEN" that help him quickly climb the ranks at DALPA.
- Moak soon becomes cozy with Delta management (attending management kid birthday parties) and subsequently selling the pilot group on his engagement/appeasement strategy. His leadership style and message cause apathy and a feeling of helplessness among the membership. We must "go along to get along!"
- Moak says he will not run for ALPA president then goes back on his word finding his way to ALPA national. By this point he's mastered the art of union politicking. He's able to use his close knit henchmen to clear the path. They attack and vilify anyone who doesn't toe the line. His ties with Delta management are further galvanized as Mr. Moak works with the A4A on national initiatives.
Mr. Moaks words (below) from a Bloomberg interview raise eyebrows with pilots, with some calling for his resignation. Those within the "inner circle" state that he misspoke and defend him. Mr. Moak never walks back his damaging words.
“This is really a good story,” ALPA President Lee Moak said Tuesday during a visit to Bloomberg Businessweek in New York, part of a quick tour to assure Wall Street analysts that ALPA’s contract demands won’t prove onerous to airlines. “I almost can’t stand it, it’s so good.”
Pilots now see themselves as collaborators with management—they increasingly lobby alongside airline executives in Washington. That, says Moak, deepens the working relationships. “All of a sudden, you find yourself on the same side of 95 percent of the issues,” he says.
“There will be a business discussion of pay as it relates to revenue,” Moak says. “You can argue about $2 or $2.05, and that matters to the crew member,” but “you’re working on the margins” on the new contracts, he says.
“The employees are now coupled to the airlines,” says Moak, a Delta captain who is stepping down at year’s end after four years as president. Moak contends that ALPA pilots at the larger carriers enjoy what he calls “mature, good contracts” already. Radical overhauls aren’t in the cards, he says.
- During the Q and A of an earnings call, when asked about the pilots, Richard Anderson declares with some measure of confidence "Labor risk is off the table".
- Moak leaves office and soon after starts Moak Consulting Group.
- Moakist use "roll call" to remove King and put Donatelli in office.
- Moak is granted an unusual leave of absence, while remaining on the seniority list. Nobody knows what he is up to.
- The pilots are presented with an early, albeit concession laden TA. Someone beyond Donatelli and the "inner circle" orchestrate a plan to push this concessionary contract through, including a reduced window and full court press? If yes, who were they listening to?
Given the above information and Moak's willingness to public sell his fellow pilots down the river, we need to take seriously the possibility that Moak's leave of absence was approved allowing to execute on his first big "consulting contract". Being retained by Delta Air Lines to orchestrate the selling of a concessionary contract. To utilize his deeply embedded yes men to help him push it through.
Plausible? What are your thoughts?
Last edited by MtEverest; 08-24-2015 at 04:41 PM.
08-24-2015, 04:36 PM
#3
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Jun 2015
Position: CA
Posts: 357
The Road Show Gang in their Death by a Thousand PowerPoint Slide presentation inadvertently placed a slide in the mix that showed a little more of the true picture behind the "30% more" bullet line. It was indeed a 30% increase from 2012 to 2015. As Heiko pointed out the change in sick leave rules in 2012 from a monetary punishment simply for calling in sick too much were removed. I would say part of that increase is not the Curlys of the world doing recreational sick leave as it is pilots no longer flying sick to avoid a pay hit! Remember above all else this is the sick leave program the company wanted and we already paid for in previous contracts.
So what was this slide? It was the raw numbers in graph form. It showed a crescent with a cusp at 2010, the bottom of the dip at 2012 and another cusp in 2015. So it was totally true that there was "a 30% increase" from 2012 to 2015 however it was obvious that sick leave had been going down prior to 2012, it was higher in 2010 and 2011, and the lowest point in 5 years was taken as the starting point. If you start in 2010 to take a longer look the rise is only 17.65% over a 5 year period. Not quite as Earth shattering. Only it gets better. They were looking at TOTAL SICK HOURS. That is correct. They were comparing the Total Sick Hours of a smaller pilot group in 2010-2012 to a larger pilot group in 2014-2015. A flat line on a Total Sick Hours chart would have meant we were using less sick hours per pilot (in a growing pilot group) so even with a slight upward slope (which could be taken to be bad) we would have been looking at a static situation. The basic premise was misrepresented. Correct the chart for size of the pilot group and it immediately drops to single digits. More to come on that tidbit.
Now we go to the assumptions. Recall how they stated the sick leave went across all demographics. Wouldn't that imply a randomization indicative of pilots simply getting ill? Better yet it was stated several times the "age was considered and did not account for the increase". Never in the history of Delta Air Lines has there been as many over 50 and over 60 pilots flying in the group. We also have older flight attendants who are scared to death to call in sick flying 120+ hour months to exotic destinations on full airplanes. The transmission rate of communicable diseases at work has never been higher. There was no data that could be used for pilots and the Flight Attendant data is compromised by the intimidation so they went to non-aviation numbers to come up with a small fudge factor to explain away our age. Yes that is correct. They took factory and office worker data to essentially state that the an aging group should not have much more sick leave usage as it gets older. It was a fraction of a percent justified by numbers taken from workers who do not have to have physicals, may not be drug tested, and can self-medicate the bejesus out of themselves. To go along with another argument Curly recently raised that the 747 has higher sick leave rates (and DPA rates which therefore must also make you a sick leave abuser) there was no mention of fleet sizes, commuting patterns, and TRIP LENGTH. Delta since FAR 117 has started flying 5 day trips domestically and the evil 747 has more trips of 6 or days than most fleets. A sick occurrence in 2015 will by sheer scheduling practices will likely entail more sick hours than in 2010.
As far as comparing Delta to other airlines I had to ask. Guess what? Airlines don't share proprietary data with each other. That is guarded as tightly as nuclear launch codes. So data was taken from the company who of course had no incentive to mislead us and was compared to what they could get from a 3rd party data mining operation which couldn't verify their numbers, only the methods of collection. So you see where this is going? One set of numbers is from the very people who are trying to rob you and the other set is from people who can only verify that yes these are numbers. Then of course it is impossible to compare numbers generated from a use it or lose it system to one using a bank system without large adjustments yet that is exactly what they did. Better yet there was no adjustment made in the comparison of a SWA 737 pilot who flew 85 hours in 12 days to a Delta 737 pilot who needed 5 more work days to do the same amount of flying. That is 5 more days of work in a nominal month that an illness would cause them to call in sick. There was no adjustment made for the amount of vacation days between airlines which again affects how many days a pilot at Delta actually has to work. Don't even get me started on shifted circadian rhythms and backside of the clock flying that is only a small portion of SWA flying compared to Delta yet that wasn't considered. I was using SWA as a point of comparison but you get the point: All factors have to be considered to make a comparison valid. There was a number, the bean counters wanted it reduced by any means necessary, discussion terminated.
So since this was such an important part of the company's supposed needs and at least 3 weeks was spent crafting a solution I asked what the company had done to try and punish the so-called sick leave abusers the past 3 years. With legal council, the MEC Chairman, his staff and the entire NC present I asked how many pilots absent a disability claim had been asked to provide a medical release. The answer was silence. Evidently it was never necessary in 3 years. I asked how many were terminated. They thought there was one but the answer came slowly and there was a little disagreement. Then the answer became they were so successful in defending pilots that no one gets fired. So I asked how many in 3 years had to be defended and evidently it was a number you didn't even have to take your shoes off to count. It was obvious by this exchange that while there may have been a handful of bad actors who the reps and the CPO knew it was never the widespread problem it was alleged to be. A pilot being sick 21 days in a rolling 365 day period means they were well over 340 days in a year! The sick leave without going on disability is another self-defeating argument. Are they saying the pilot is a bad employee because they attempt to get better and return to flying before they have to go on disability (and half pay)? There is an economic incentive to get well but also it takes a lot of FAA hoops to jump through if you do have a medical condition. That is the nature of the beast that prevents easy comparisons to other work groups and makes us unique.
From my very biased position as a line pilot a mere company want was parlayed with a union hunch wrapped in hasty analysis and incomplete research to produce Doctor Frankenharwood's Monster. No one wanted to admit who first suggested the medical release language which probably indicates it was an internally suggested overzealous attempt at appeasing the company rather than a company demand from the outset. You can Blame it on Rio or simply blame it on extreme haste to get a deal signed in record time. Thankfully the pilots rejected this.
- Phil Farrell
So what was this slide? It was the raw numbers in graph form. It showed a crescent with a cusp at 2010, the bottom of the dip at 2012 and another cusp in 2015. So it was totally true that there was "a 30% increase" from 2012 to 2015 however it was obvious that sick leave had been going down prior to 2012, it was higher in 2010 and 2011, and the lowest point in 5 years was taken as the starting point. If you start in 2010 to take a longer look the rise is only 17.65% over a 5 year period. Not quite as Earth shattering. Only it gets better. They were looking at TOTAL SICK HOURS. That is correct. They were comparing the Total Sick Hours of a smaller pilot group in 2010-2012 to a larger pilot group in 2014-2015. A flat line on a Total Sick Hours chart would have meant we were using less sick hours per pilot (in a growing pilot group) so even with a slight upward slope (which could be taken to be bad) we would have been looking at a static situation. The basic premise was misrepresented. Correct the chart for size of the pilot group and it immediately drops to single digits. More to come on that tidbit.
Now we go to the assumptions. Recall how they stated the sick leave went across all demographics. Wouldn't that imply a randomization indicative of pilots simply getting ill? Better yet it was stated several times the "age was considered and did not account for the increase". Never in the history of Delta Air Lines has there been as many over 50 and over 60 pilots flying in the group. We also have older flight attendants who are scared to death to call in sick flying 120+ hour months to exotic destinations on full airplanes. The transmission rate of communicable diseases at work has never been higher. There was no data that could be used for pilots and the Flight Attendant data is compromised by the intimidation so they went to non-aviation numbers to come up with a small fudge factor to explain away our age. Yes that is correct. They took factory and office worker data to essentially state that the an aging group should not have much more sick leave usage as it gets older. It was a fraction of a percent justified by numbers taken from workers who do not have to have physicals, may not be drug tested, and can self-medicate the bejesus out of themselves. To go along with another argument Curly recently raised that the 747 has higher sick leave rates (and DPA rates which therefore must also make you a sick leave abuser) there was no mention of fleet sizes, commuting patterns, and TRIP LENGTH. Delta since FAR 117 has started flying 5 day trips domestically and the evil 747 has more trips of 6 or days than most fleets. A sick occurrence in 2015 will by sheer scheduling practices will likely entail more sick hours than in 2010.
As far as comparing Delta to other airlines I had to ask. Guess what? Airlines don't share proprietary data with each other. That is guarded as tightly as nuclear launch codes. So data was taken from the company who of course had no incentive to mislead us and was compared to what they could get from a 3rd party data mining operation which couldn't verify their numbers, only the methods of collection. So you see where this is going? One set of numbers is from the very people who are trying to rob you and the other set is from people who can only verify that yes these are numbers. Then of course it is impossible to compare numbers generated from a use it or lose it system to one using a bank system without large adjustments yet that is exactly what they did. Better yet there was no adjustment made in the comparison of a SWA 737 pilot who flew 85 hours in 12 days to a Delta 737 pilot who needed 5 more work days to do the same amount of flying. That is 5 more days of work in a nominal month that an illness would cause them to call in sick. There was no adjustment made for the amount of vacation days between airlines which again affects how many days a pilot at Delta actually has to work. Don't even get me started on shifted circadian rhythms and backside of the clock flying that is only a small portion of SWA flying compared to Delta yet that wasn't considered. I was using SWA as a point of comparison but you get the point: All factors have to be considered to make a comparison valid. There was a number, the bean counters wanted it reduced by any means necessary, discussion terminated.
So since this was such an important part of the company's supposed needs and at least 3 weeks was spent crafting a solution I asked what the company had done to try and punish the so-called sick leave abusers the past 3 years. With legal council, the MEC Chairman, his staff and the entire NC present I asked how many pilots absent a disability claim had been asked to provide a medical release. The answer was silence. Evidently it was never necessary in 3 years. I asked how many were terminated. They thought there was one but the answer came slowly and there was a little disagreement. Then the answer became they were so successful in defending pilots that no one gets fired. So I asked how many in 3 years had to be defended and evidently it was a number you didn't even have to take your shoes off to count. It was obvious by this exchange that while there may have been a handful of bad actors who the reps and the CPO knew it was never the widespread problem it was alleged to be. A pilot being sick 21 days in a rolling 365 day period means they were well over 340 days in a year! The sick leave without going on disability is another self-defeating argument. Are they saying the pilot is a bad employee because they attempt to get better and return to flying before they have to go on disability (and half pay)? There is an economic incentive to get well but also it takes a lot of FAA hoops to jump through if you do have a medical condition. That is the nature of the beast that prevents easy comparisons to other work groups and makes us unique.
From my very biased position as a line pilot a mere company want was parlayed with a union hunch wrapped in hasty analysis and incomplete research to produce Doctor Frankenharwood's Monster. No one wanted to admit who first suggested the medical release language which probably indicates it was an internally suggested overzealous attempt at appeasing the company rather than a company demand from the outset. You can Blame it on Rio or simply blame it on extreme haste to get a deal signed in record time. Thankfully the pilots rejected this.
- Phil Farrell
08-24-2015, 05:20 PM
#5
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2015
Posts: 4,116
Well... there is nothing like bankruptcy, loss of retirement security, and cutting pay in half to generate incentives to avoid even further economic pain with uncompensated sick leave.
Truth is painful history, experience, the actions of management and the failure of alpa has created the monsters we have apparently become.
As I told the phone pollster..... deal with it.
Truth is painful history, experience, the actions of management and the failure of alpa has created the monsters we have apparently become.
As I told the phone pollster..... deal with it.
08-24-2015, 05:35 PM
#7
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2015
Posts: 4,116
I'm sure it inspires confidence in this group to know their dues money supports such cutting edge attempts at humor.
Like I said.... we should all be embarrassed.
I'm imagining you sourced that gem from the cover of the exclusive invite to the last alpa national meeting.
Like I said.... we should all be embarrassed.
I'm imagining you sourced that gem from the cover of the exclusive invite to the last alpa national meeting.
08-24-2015, 06:30 PM
#8
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2007
Posts: 328
LOL!
I am impressed!
A DALPA mole finally figured out how to post pictures.
Well done Sir (golf clapping).
What you seem to misunderstand is that this a "grass roots effort" to take back our union.
This grass roots effort has said "ENOUGH". We have given ENOUGH. TA15 was NOT about the pay.
I'm in no rush, I'm not worried. It's time to throw out the trash and take our time.
Enjoy flying the line fellas....your days are over.
I am impressed!
A DALPA mole finally figured out how to post pictures.
Well done Sir (golf clapping).
What you seem to misunderstand is that this a "grass roots effort" to take back our union.
This grass roots effort has said "ENOUGH". We have given ENOUGH. TA15 was NOT about the pay.
I'm in no rush, I'm not worried. It's time to throw out the trash and take our time.
Enjoy flying the line fellas....your days are over.
08-24-2015, 06:40 PM
#10
veut gagner à la loterie
Joined APC: Apr 2008
Position: Light Chop
Posts: 23,286
The Road Show Gang in their Death by a Thousand PowerPoint Slide presentation inadvertently placed a slide in the mix that showed a little more of the true picture behind the "30% more" bullet line. It was indeed a 30% increase from 2012 to 2015. As Heiko pointed out the change in sick leave rules in 2012 from a monetary punishment simply for calling in sick too much were removed. I would say part of that increase is not the Curlys of the world doing recreational sick leave as it is pilots no longer flying sick to avoid a pay hit! Remember above all else this is the sick leave program the company wanted and we already paid for in previous contracts.
So what was this slide? It was the raw numbers in graph form. It showed a crescent with a cusp at 2010, the bottom of the dip at 2012 and another cusp in 2015. So it was totally true that there was "a 30% increase" from 2012 to 2015 however it was obvious that sick leave had been going down prior to 2012, it was higher in 2010 and 2011, and the lowest point in 5 years was taken as the starting point. If you start in 2010 to take a longer look the rise is only 17.65% over a 5 year period. Not quite as Earth shattering. Only it gets better. They were looking at TOTAL SICK HOURS. That is correct. They were comparing the Total Sick Hours of a smaller pilot group in 2010-2012 to a larger pilot group in 2014-2015. A flat line on a Total Sick Hours chart would have meant we were using less sick hours per pilot (in a growing pilot group) so even with a slight upward slope (which could be taken to be bad) we would have been looking at a static situation. The basic premise was misrepresented. Correct the chart for size of the pilot group and it immediately drops to single digits. More to come on that tidbit.
Now we go to the assumptions. Recall how they stated the sick leave went across all demographics. Wouldn't that imply a randomization indicative of pilots simply getting ill? Better yet it was stated several times the "age was considered and did not account for the increase". Never in the history of Delta Air Lines has there been as many over 50 and over 60 pilots flying in the group. We also have older flight attendants who are scared to death to call in sick flying 120+ hour months to exotic destinations on full airplanes. The transmission rate of communicable diseases at work has never been higher. There was no data that could be used for pilots and the Flight Attendant data is compromised by the intimidation so they went to non-aviation numbers to come up with a small fudge factor to explain away our age. Yes that is correct. They took factory and office worker data to essentially state that the an aging group should not have much more sick leave usage as it gets older. It was a fraction of a percent justified by numbers taken from workers who do not have to have physicals, may not be drug tested, and can self-medicate the bejesus out of themselves. To go along with another argument Curly recently raised that the 747 has higher sick leave rates (and DPA rates which therefore must also make you a sick leave abuser) there was no mention of fleet sizes, commuting patterns, and TRIP LENGTH. Delta since FAR 117 has started flying 5 day trips domestically and the evil 747 has more trips of 6 or days than most fleets. A sick occurrence in 2015 will by sheer scheduling practices will likely entail more sick hours than in 2010.
As far as comparing Delta to other airlines I had to ask. Guess what? Airlines don't share proprietary data with each other. That is guarded as tightly as nuclear launch codes. So data was taken from the company who of course had no incentive to mislead us and was compared to what they could get from a 3rd party data mining operation which couldn't verify their numbers, only the methods of collection. So you see where this is going? One set of numbers is from the very people who are trying to rob you and the other set is from people who can only verify that yes these are numbers. Then of course it is impossible to compare numbers generated from a use it or lose it system to one using a bank system without large adjustments yet that is exactly what they did. Better yet there was no adjustment made in the comparison of a SWA 737 pilot who flew 85 hours in 12 days to a Delta 737 pilot who needed 5 more work days to do the same amount of flying. That is 5 more days of work in a nominal month that an illness would cause them to call in sick. There was no adjustment made for the amount of vacation days between airlines which again affects how many days a pilot at Delta actually has to work. Don't even get me started on shifted circadian rhythms and backside of the clock flying that is only a small portion of SWA flying compared to Delta yet that wasn't considered. I was using SWA as a point of comparison but you get the point: All factors have to be considered to make a comparison valid. There was a number, the bean counters wanted it reduced by any means necessary, discussion terminated.
So since this was such an important part of the company's supposed needs and at least 3 weeks was spent crafting a solution I asked what the company had done to try and punish the so-called sick leave abusers the past 3 years. With legal council, the MEC Chairman, his staff and the entire NC present I asked how many pilots absent a disability claim had been asked to provide a medical release. The answer was silence. Evidently it was never necessary in 3 years. I asked how many were terminated. They thought there was one but the answer came slowly and there was a little disagreement. Then the answer became they were so successful in defending pilots that no one gets fired. So I asked how many in 3 years had to be defended and evidently it was a number you didn't even have to take your shoes off to count. It was obvious by this exchange that while there may have been a handful of bad actors who the reps and the CPO knew it was never the widespread problem it was alleged to be. A pilot being sick 21 days in a rolling 365 day period means they were well over 340 days in a year! The sick leave without going on disability is another self-defeating argument. Are they saying the pilot is a bad employee because they attempt to get better and return to flying before they have to go on disability (and half pay)? There is an economic incentive to get well but also it takes a lot of FAA hoops to jump through if you do have a medical condition. That is the nature of the beast that prevents easy comparisons to other work groups and makes us unique.
From my very biased position as a line pilot a mere company want was parlayed with a union hunch wrapped in hasty analysis and incomplete research to produce Doctor Frankenharwood's Monster. No one wanted to admit who first suggested the medical release language which probably indicates it was an internally suggested overzealous attempt at appeasing the company rather than a company demand from the outset. You can Blame it on Rio or simply blame it on extreme haste to get a deal signed in record time. Thankfully the pilots rejected this.
So what was this slide? It was the raw numbers in graph form. It showed a crescent with a cusp at 2010, the bottom of the dip at 2012 and another cusp in 2015. So it was totally true that there was "a 30% increase" from 2012 to 2015 however it was obvious that sick leave had been going down prior to 2012, it was higher in 2010 and 2011, and the lowest point in 5 years was taken as the starting point. If you start in 2010 to take a longer look the rise is only 17.65% over a 5 year period. Not quite as Earth shattering. Only it gets better. They were looking at TOTAL SICK HOURS. That is correct. They were comparing the Total Sick Hours of a smaller pilot group in 2010-2012 to a larger pilot group in 2014-2015. A flat line on a Total Sick Hours chart would have meant we were using less sick hours per pilot (in a growing pilot group) so even with a slight upward slope (which could be taken to be bad) we would have been looking at a static situation. The basic premise was misrepresented. Correct the chart for size of the pilot group and it immediately drops to single digits. More to come on that tidbit.
Now we go to the assumptions. Recall how they stated the sick leave went across all demographics. Wouldn't that imply a randomization indicative of pilots simply getting ill? Better yet it was stated several times the "age was considered and did not account for the increase". Never in the history of Delta Air Lines has there been as many over 50 and over 60 pilots flying in the group. We also have older flight attendants who are scared to death to call in sick flying 120+ hour months to exotic destinations on full airplanes. The transmission rate of communicable diseases at work has never been higher. There was no data that could be used for pilots and the Flight Attendant data is compromised by the intimidation so they went to non-aviation numbers to come up with a small fudge factor to explain away our age. Yes that is correct. They took factory and office worker data to essentially state that the an aging group should not have much more sick leave usage as it gets older. It was a fraction of a percent justified by numbers taken from workers who do not have to have physicals, may not be drug tested, and can self-medicate the bejesus out of themselves. To go along with another argument Curly recently raised that the 747 has higher sick leave rates (and DPA rates which therefore must also make you a sick leave abuser) there was no mention of fleet sizes, commuting patterns, and TRIP LENGTH. Delta since FAR 117 has started flying 5 day trips domestically and the evil 747 has more trips of 6 or days than most fleets. A sick occurrence in 2015 will by sheer scheduling practices will likely entail more sick hours than in 2010.
As far as comparing Delta to other airlines I had to ask. Guess what? Airlines don't share proprietary data with each other. That is guarded as tightly as nuclear launch codes. So data was taken from the company who of course had no incentive to mislead us and was compared to what they could get from a 3rd party data mining operation which couldn't verify their numbers, only the methods of collection. So you see where this is going? One set of numbers is from the very people who are trying to rob you and the other set is from people who can only verify that yes these are numbers. Then of course it is impossible to compare numbers generated from a use it or lose it system to one using a bank system without large adjustments yet that is exactly what they did. Better yet there was no adjustment made in the comparison of a SWA 737 pilot who flew 85 hours in 12 days to a Delta 737 pilot who needed 5 more work days to do the same amount of flying. That is 5 more days of work in a nominal month that an illness would cause them to call in sick. There was no adjustment made for the amount of vacation days between airlines which again affects how many days a pilot at Delta actually has to work. Don't even get me started on shifted circadian rhythms and backside of the clock flying that is only a small portion of SWA flying compared to Delta yet that wasn't considered. I was using SWA as a point of comparison but you get the point: All factors have to be considered to make a comparison valid. There was a number, the bean counters wanted it reduced by any means necessary, discussion terminated.
So since this was such an important part of the company's supposed needs and at least 3 weeks was spent crafting a solution I asked what the company had done to try and punish the so-called sick leave abusers the past 3 years. With legal council, the MEC Chairman, his staff and the entire NC present I asked how many pilots absent a disability claim had been asked to provide a medical release. The answer was silence. Evidently it was never necessary in 3 years. I asked how many were terminated. They thought there was one but the answer came slowly and there was a little disagreement. Then the answer became they were so successful in defending pilots that no one gets fired. So I asked how many in 3 years had to be defended and evidently it was a number you didn't even have to take your shoes off to count. It was obvious by this exchange that while there may have been a handful of bad actors who the reps and the CPO knew it was never the widespread problem it was alleged to be. A pilot being sick 21 days in a rolling 365 day period means they were well over 340 days in a year! The sick leave without going on disability is another self-defeating argument. Are they saying the pilot is a bad employee because they attempt to get better and return to flying before they have to go on disability (and half pay)? There is an economic incentive to get well but also it takes a lot of FAA hoops to jump through if you do have a medical condition. That is the nature of the beast that prevents easy comparisons to other work groups and makes us unique.
From my very biased position as a line pilot a mere company want was parlayed with a union hunch wrapped in hasty analysis and incomplete research to produce Doctor Frankenharwood's Monster. No one wanted to admit who first suggested the medical release language which probably indicates it was an internally suggested overzealous attempt at appeasing the company rather than a company demand from the outset. You can Blame it on Rio or simply blame it on extreme haste to get a deal signed in record time. Thankfully the pilots rejected this.
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