Prospect

Dude you don't need to write me a book to say that Delta's policy is better if you use all the sick leave each and every year for your entire career. I get that. But the vast majority of people that I know don't do that. For those people, our system is better in my opinion. Your previous post attempted to use an ad hominem attack on me, acting like my inexperience makes me wrong. Perhaps you can use some other logic to explain how for the majority of SWA pilots our sick accrual system isn't better. Try to keep it to standard internet forum post length, as I don't have the time you do to read your ****. I don't care that much what you think. If you think it's realistic for us to get $600/tfp in this contract, great. I think you're being unrealistic. Is it allowed by the RLA? Sure. So is $1000/tfp, so why stop at $600? Why be so narrow minded?

Here's a fact for you. SWAPA is not trying to get $400/tfp, let alone $600. They are trying to get slightly more than Delta 737 rates. Ask them, as I have. So arguing for what you are is just wasted effort. That said, waste away.

Caveman

And a future bid avoid is born

bay982

Lew is probably the most valuable contributor to the SWA forum and has educated more people on the ins and outs of the RLA than anyone else. If your attention span is too short for his posts don’t read them. It’ll be your loss.

Your opinion might matter if you backed it up with any actual data. Your inexperience doesn’t make you wrong. Your lack of any data supported reasoning does.

myrkridia

As a Delta pilot Lew's long posts have been absolutely invaluable in my continuing education of the RLA and tackling common arguments and shortcomings we find ourselves in as pilots. I can disagree with their conclusions occasionally but none of their contributions are lacking in substance. In fact, I was hoping Lew to continue contributing in the United and American forums specifically after Delta's section 6 concluded.

symbian simian

LOL. I guess when you said you would wait for Lew's reply you weren't thinking ahead. Maybe quit while you're behind?

Zman81

It’s true what he said. All our union reps have seen what we are asking for! With that being said it’s basically top 737 rate of everyone. If you don’t believe me reach out to your domicile reps. I am hoping it matches at least deltas 757 rate!

Prospect

Lew takes a lot of time out of his day to make very detailed a data rich posts. I can appreciate that. What I don't understand is why, through all that research and thinking, he doesn't understand that we will not get anywhere near $600/tfp in this contract. Again, the data for this is quite simple, despite several here wanting to claim I haven't put it forward. SWAPA isn't trying for that. Here's some more data. Delta got what.. a 30% raise? The company will never agree to give us a 130% raise. Congress will never force them to. It's a wild ask. It's unrealistic. I'm sorry if that's not technical enough for you, but such is the concept of realism.

I also don't understand why every thread on here has to be hijacked with him repeating the same message, which is one that is very far from actually happening.

PNWFlyer

have to buy MAX10s to get that.

CA1900

Same. She does great work, but her work shouldn't be necessary.

Lewbronski

Thanks

What I don’t understand is why you have become so extraordinarily triggered by the fact that I made one post explaining that, “for 'fun',” I’d modeled the rates that would be required to achieve a 30% premium on Delta’s ten-year career compensation. I explicitly stated in that post, "I'm posting this just to give us an idea of how far behind we are in career compensation."

And here, once again, you’re attempting to beat on an argument I didn’t make. You’ve gone to war against a position that sprung up out of your own imagination and are trying to frame it as if you're attacking something I've espoused.

If you’re doing that on purpose, it’s dishonest.

If you don’t realize you’re doing it, then maybe take a step back and reflect on what you’re doing and what your motivations for doing so might be.

I don’t know what SWAPA is demanding in mediation. I’m also not sure that you know what they’re aiming for despite your assertions here.

First, given your apparent bent toward straw man arguments and confirmation bias, it could be that you heard only what you thought you wanted to hear when you were told whatever it was you were told. Who knows?

Beyond that, even if you’re communicating what you were told with 100% fidelity whatever some rep told you about what they might be insisting on in mediation, it doesn’t mean that what you were told is necessarily true. It could be that at this point, for whatever reason, they don’t want people knowing what their position is. It could be they are demanding more than most of us think is possible and they don’t want to make it public yet in case they’re unable to achieve it. Maybe they’re actually only seeking something much less than any of us would guess. Who knows?

It could be that you’re already a known quantity to SWAPA and they intentionally seeded you with misinformation. Who knows?

It could be that you're working for the company in some capacity and, for whatever reason, are intentionally trying to mislead us. Who knows?

Even if what you were told is entirely true right now and you have also communicated whatever you were told entirely accurately here on APC, it doesn’t mean that it might not change at some point in the future if, for example, the membership makes clear by polling or by voting down TA1 (when it arrives) that SWAPA’s demands were insufficient. Who knows?

And to that point, raising awareness within the pilot group around where SWAPA pilots stand relative to career compensation available at other airlines may ultimately impact, now or at some future point, what SWAPA demands at the bargaining table if a large enough portion of the pilot group becomes convicted that their career compensation is inadequate in light of our deficit with respect to what other airline pilots earn at various points in their career timelines.

More than one pilot in our group has told me that they had no real idea where we stacked up to other airline pilots from the perspective of career compensation before I began posting these charts. Several have expressed to me that they never even considered evaluating our compensation on the basis of any metric besides simple rates. Many have informed me that seeing the charts I've published has been eye-opening. IOW, they have the potential to make a difference.

Delta's total rate raise after DOS + 3 years will be about 34%.

Who knows what the company will agree to or not? Tell us - exactly what is the threshold beyond which the company will not agree to any additional raise? How did you arrive at the cutoff you calculated? So, it's not 130%. What is it exactly?

And you have to understand that, for YEARS, most of the pilot group believed that the company would NEVER agree to a B-Fund and that they'd NEVER agree to retro. And yet, voila, we now have a B-Fund and we got some retro. Company apologists made the same sorts of defeatist arguments you're making all over this thread. And they were wrong.

If faced with the credible threat of a legal strike, the company may agree to more than you imagine. Or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll lock us out and hire several thousand scab pilots. Is that realistic?

What if SWAPA called a legal strike after a release to self help because the company wouldn't agree to various provisions or stipulations within SWAPA's set of demands? Would you cross the line and work for the company if you felt SWAPA's demands were too unrealistic or too onerous?

And you also seem to imply that you know for a fact what would cause Congress to intervene in a SWAPA strike even though Congress has never intervened in an airline strike before. Beyond that, you even seem to think you know what the terms of a congressional intervention in a SWAPA strike will look like. How do you know? What makes you so confident?

Some more history for you: for greater than thirty years, irrefutable evidence has existed that proves the President cannot shut down a strike under the RLA. He/she can only unilaterally delay it for a maximum of 60 days by establishing a PEB. Yet, here at SWA, a union official imbued with some credibility via their background reportedly swore up and down that the RLA path for building leverage was pointless because the President would just permanently shut down any union that happened to gain a release from mediation. Therefore, for more than two decades, in no small part because of this message reverberating out through the pilot group there was no real impetus to pursue leverage under the RLA. Over all those years, apparently no one fact-checked that "credible" person. Even in the last 12 months, as evidence of that legacy, at least one SWAPA official continued to state that the President could shut down a strike. They've finally corrected their view, backed away from that position, and have made clear that's not the case. But it took decades for our pilot group to begin to embrace the RLA path - all because of uninformed, overconfident baloney.

You stating with such confidence and zero facts to back it up what you are so sure Congress will do is the same sort of nonsense that has kept this pilot group in lagging contracts for the last several decades.

Really? I've hijacked "every thread on here"? Isn't that more than a bit of a sweeping generalization?

What exactly is my "repeating" message "that is very far from happening"?