tm602

No worries man. Its the internet and skim reading (I'm guilty of it) leaves things lost in what was meant.
I called it LUV because I am an extremely lazy typer....

Swedepilut

A union member told me long ago. We picket to wear out the membership and make them think they have done all they could.

I always thought that was an interesting line.

AntiPeter

Probably the only truth to come out of NJASAP in the last 15 years.

STzBack

Makes so much sense. Intentionally or not, it is indeed what happens.

crgcar

Before you tear into the union too much, be aware that the Union IS the pilot group. The leadership has to work with the amount of leverage the pilot group provides. In this case, we had a certain percent that sacrificed a lot and a certain percent that gave little to nothing. Unfortunately, we ended up getting back what the group as a whole put into it.

followingdreams

ar

This is 100% true! Picketing without a strike makes ZERO sense. They deal with "angry labor" everyday in their lives. They are not going to call NJ and say "Pay them more" because they know how much they are already sending to NJ and know that number will go up. You wont get any sympathy from them. If you want the clients to react, they need to be inconvenienced by not being able to get the flight they need and THAT is the point they will call NJ and say "Figure this out or I am taking my business elsewhere". Likewise, NJ has not reason to negotiate, they are happy to have 50+ families show up to picket because it means nothing. Overtime, the amout of people picketing will be less and less. They will wear you down. NJ will negotiate (and ONLY negotiate) when they cant effectively provide a service for their clients.

ZebraSpots

There’s no leverage here. Not in a 10 year CBA duration.

That being said, the AIP fixes nothing and the continued erosion of NetJets (by its own merits) will continue.

How much market share will we need to give Flex before management comes back with enough to fix things?

My bet is a lot but… it’s not my company. I just work here.

jtf560

If there was no leverage, there would be no AIP. There just wasn't enough leverage for anything better than the AIP we got. It does perhaps fix some of the crew food issues, but I do agree it solves almost nothing else. I can't imagine morale going up much and I certainly don't see attrition going down much. It seems to be a lose/ lose situation for everyone.

JMO127

Please explain what leverage there is. Please avoid the " because my union speaks for me" bs rhetoric. Also, none of the "mom told me I was special and therefore there just is"

1. Did the leaving en mass occur (mass exodus) to the levels foretold by the union fortune tellers?
2. Did jets get parked? Other than PW engine issues?
3. Did or was the operation grind/ground to a hault?
​​4. Did empty new hire classes occur?
5. Did anything actually happen other than deploying section 6 tactics during an IBI?
6. Or the "Union says so"

But please carry on pushing the limited vocal majority talking points of the MB.

jtf560

Why would the company give us another 200-300 million a year in salary and benefits when we still had almost 6 years left on the 2020 contract? This is a Bershire Hathaway company that is all about profit. This is sucking away quite a bit of profit for nothing if there is no leverage. Anyone who thinks Uncle Warren would allow this if there is no leverage is delusional.

As to what the leverage was, is was a combination of many of the above. The old death by 1000 cuts. There was no one thing that got this AIP.

1. The union leadership forecast increased attrition and was clear in repeatedly telling us that this would not be enough. This was a smaller part of the leverage. This AIP is unlikely to slow attrition much.
2. Mx availability, beyond the engine issues (that are almost completely solved now), has been trending down for many months. This is mostly the company making lots of poor choices and while the company wants to blame it on the union, it was unlikely that it was the pilots themselves doing the leverage building here. This is unlikely to change much whatever the outcome of the vote. I would only count this as the company perhaps believing it was leverage when in fact it wasn't.
3. Operations did not grind to a halt, but they certainly were getting worse and worse. Unhappy/ unmotivated pilots don't go above and beyond to make operations work smoothly. Likelihood to Recommend has been tanking and will likely continue to stay low or get worse regardless of the outcome of the vote since everyone is disappointed. I believe this is the biggest part of the leverage and this is what got us the 2018 contract without the union going out to force a new contract intentionally.
4. Newhire classes weren't empty, but they did have quite a few that were much smaller than planned. The pilot factories are pumping out pilots and this alone was never going to be a large percentage of the leverage. As other, better companies increased their recruitment of the experienced pilot pool, management was forced to reduce the mins more than once. They are still able to recruit, but not the pilots that they have always preferred. It remains to be seen if this will continue if the competition starts going after the same restricted ATPs in larger numbers since this contract is not particularly good for those at the bottom of the seniority list. The major airlines jump the payscales up very quickly and then the difference from one year to the next narrows after the scales are pretty close to the top. NetJets starts OK and then slowly moves up evenly over 14 years. This is going to be a problem for keeping pilots around. Just another thing the AIP doesn't fix for the company.
5. The union was able to annoy and embarrass management and Bershire Hathaway. The ads were getting worse and worse for the "brand" that management claims is all important. I firmly believe the ads destroying the brand were a real part of the leverage and much more so than any of the pickets, union bling, or the pilots not asking questions to management. The pickets, billboards, and advertisements will stop. The operations issues will probably remain with an unhappy pilot force. I'm sure some will be more motivated now, but paying me more while I'm still not happy isn't going to motivate me to go above and beyond and to work more days. This partway there AIP will likely buy slightly improved operations for a while, but without quality of life improvements that go beyond crew food and OT at 8pm on the last day, more and more pilots will burn out and ops will suffer.
6. Union leadership always said it wouldn't be any one thing that does it.