Deserthusker

Ok. I thought it was after three years you would get the money that has been building for the three years.

followingdreams

The easiest way to think about it is you earn it each year and what you earn in year one will be paid out quarterly in year 4 (If you are still with the company). Most people look at that and say no matter when you leave, you will leave 3 years on the table but that is not entirely true. If you "Retire" with the company, they will continue to pay out (not sure if they lump sum it or not) at retirement. Retirement, my understanding, means 10 years at the company OR age 65. So in theory if you "retired" from the company at 65 and took say a 91 job, they would still pay you out.

CFITlikely

followingdreams

Problem with that is Flex cannot LEGALLY do any kind of direct contribution for pilots, they would have to provide that for EVERYONE at the company.

CFITlikely

Yes, I understand that. It's the whole reason why they came out with deferred comp and tried to sell it as a retirement bump, which it's not. It would be nice if they could offer more to the pilots only, I wonder why Flexjet pilots can't get something better but places like NJ and airlines can? Hmmm

followingdreams

Well $18k is +/- a 7-10% "payment", if you are over 50 it can be a "direct" contribution that you dont pay taxes on. Otherwise, its my understanding, if you take it in cash up front, they will gross it up so you NET $18k...its not awful! I dont know why it gets trashed as much as it does. I get that they can say "About that $18k...we are not going to do that" but they have not shown a history of that so I will take them at their word.

They cant get "better" because they are not a Union, a Union can have a separate retirement plan than non-union eomployees. Since Flex is not Union, they have to offer the same to every employee. Then again, how much "effort" from the pilots was put into the recent pay increase? We did not have to stand outside in Omaha and quite a few other places to get that pay increase to "force" the company to bargin. Paywise, I am very happy with Flex, there will always be better but sometimes its just good enough. Trust me, when you see these regionals starting to bring in training contracts, Flex is not such a bad place.

CFITlikely

Deferred comp is better than nothing. It gets trashed because it is trash for the numerous reasons laid out on a whole thread about it. It's another example of managment not listening to what the pilots want and doing something completely different.

Unions are far from perfect but you're making my point, the pilot group has no leverage on management to push for the things they want. That's why you end up with things like deferred comp and pay raises where only pilots in the first 3 years see any bump. Instead you get to "hope" that management will do anything for you, your only other option is to leave for greener pastures. And now that hiring as slowed down from where it was, attrition has probably (I don't know for sure) slowed and they won't see any reason to give you anything.

TexasLonghorn

I don't get why this is brought up like Flex couldn't just... do that? It would make it a more attractive company and drive retention company wide. Fairly certain a scheduler or line service tech's salary demands are much lower than the pilot groups' and it would improve morale.

IMaFracGOD

How many employees as a total at the company that would be getting 18%?
What's standard industry for all those other thousands of employees?

TexasLonghorn

I would wager a guess that there aren't 1000 employees at Flexjet outside of the pilot group, let alone multiple thousands. And if management wants to espouse rhetoric such as employees are the foundation of a service company and that they take long term approaches to relationships, then the extra ~$7000 - $11000 they would be providing the majority of their employees would follow those guiding principles.

Would they be paying over industry standards for those employees? Probably for 98% of them, yes. Is that a super enticing carrot to dangle to prospective employees, as well as a great way to drive retention? Also, yes.