KingChicken

I've been pretty dissapointed with our union leadership the last few months. Management wants to grow the company and has, from what I've heard, made some pretty reasonable offers. Union shot them down because there was nothing in it for the senior guys.... THE WHOLE LAST CONTRACT WAS FOR THE SENIOR GUYS. Management knows that in order to grow we need to make our junior positions more attractive. Nobody is going to upgrade if being a junior captain sucks, nobody is going to apply if being a junior FO sucks. Making changes to our reserve rules would go a really long way to attracting and retaining talent. Our union seems to want our junior positions to sucks as hard as possible in order to encourage attrition that they can use as leverage to get more for the senior pilots.

Management wants flexible bases? Great. Commuters want long trips and positive space commutes. Seems like theres a pretty easy solution to both of these wants.

I just want union leadership that doesnt tell me that I havent 'earned the right' to pick up open time. GFY.

/rant

Rhdicjkwso

Seniors actually lost the most in this contract. They had it extremely good and could stack their schedules with the best trips and most efficient flying prior to the continuous open time implementation. If you get a turn line these days you’re stuck flying 95 hours every month unable to pick up anything because everyone junior is sitting at home refreshing open time not limited by block hour limitations.


What exactly are the reasonable offers? Sounds like each of the company proposals benefits themselves and does nothing for pilot QOL. Actually, they make pilots QOL considerably worse. Each of the 4 company requests have 0 benefit to pilots. If you can list them I’d love to hear it.

to the long trips and commutable trips. Talk to your reps about this.

Union used to be pro reserve pickups but reversed that a while back. Also should talk to your rep as to why they did that.

Seems like they’re filling captain upgrade slots just fine. Here’s another secret. Being junior sucks everywhere and it’s only temporary.

nibake

288 to 414? hmmmm.

nibake

This is the one thing everyone should understand. This job is not about the potential of the enterprise. The potential is not being realized and we shouldn't expect it to. Those who are here or want to come here should do so with a solid understand that the status quo is what we're all going to get.

StoneQOLdCrazy

Define "reasonable offers." Let me guess, that's how the chief pilot desribed it.

It's not ALPA's job to "attract and retain talent." It IS alpa's job to leverage every possible opportunity to improve the contract for every pilot on the list.

You seem to have a complete lack of understanding for the ways management will try to divide and conquer the pilot group at all times, but especially during negotiations.

You are already falling into the trap with your "junior/senior" griping, and by advocating for your personal agenda, which appear to be positive space commuting and long trips. (As an aside, how does one get "positive space commuting" if not living in a city served by Sun Country?).

"Flexible bases" would be a HUGE win for mgmt, and could create significant uncertainty for the pilot group. Flexibility for managment equals unpredicabiity for pilots. There are many potential pitfalls for pilots associated with "flexible" basing. It's probably why they are so rare in other ALPA contracts.

To sum it up, if in your words "management knows that in order to grow we need to make our junior positions more attractive," then, from a union standpoint, managment will have to expend negotiating capital to improve the contract in whatever areas ALPA has (hopefully with surveys and pilot input) determined to be negotiating priorities. That's the company's cost of getting what they want. That's how collective bargaining should work.

My perception from your post is that you are looking at everything through the eyes of managment and yourself. That's a bad place to be in this industry if you want the best possible contract. Good luck

section19

A little disingenuous when 111 of those FOs are people not on property. Yes we are currently
overstaffed on FOs but not at that insane of a mismatch.

nibake

Let me introduce myself, John, and the FO, TBD, who will be working the flight to RSW today. In the back we have four great flight attendants, TBD, TBD, TBD, and TBD.

KingChicken

Exept apparently reserve pilots. Especially our reserve captains who make less than mid seniority FO's that dont mind picking up a little extra work once in a while. Seriously. I made about 70k more than I would if I were willing to upgrade. Its stupid.

I really hope I'm not the first person to tell you that offline deadheads are positive space too, right? Your home airport just needs airline service. Atlas pilots dont get positive space tickets on Atlas flights.

I really think you should re-read what you wrote here, because it is the absolute crux of the problem. Management IS willing to expend negotiating capital to fix the 'junior life sucks' problem, but the union wants to take that capital for something completely unrelated. They cant just take a win for the little guy. Take it and ****in run. no, no, no..the senior guys that work 10 days a month and make 400k need more. Everybody at this company has earned the right to work as hard or as little as they want to and make as much or as little as they want to. If I've fallen intothe junior/ senior trap its because the union has put me there by bargaining for ****ty work rules for only a small portion of our pilots, and refuse to change that. When the MEC uses regional contract language as a framework for how we should treat our reserve pilots and mainline contract language for how we should treat our lineholders, its pretty clear who they truly represent. $20 everytime I hear the words Mesaba, Pinnacle, or Air Wisconcin on todays call, which conveniently is about reserves.

R0GER BALL

About the only thing more disappointing then the schedules is the MEC. The scheduling rep? Yeah. The fatigue rep? Yeah. Our chairman? If I get educated one more time on the "types of bargaining"... Well, I stopped tuning into those calls. I'm not as upset as King Chicken but I sure get it.

Sun Country is who they say we are. There's no big growth and great opportunity. This is a forty year plus funny little airline from funny little Minnesota which maximizes shareholder wealth. Now for venture capitalists. You're right Nibake- status quo. It'd be nice to be part of something bigger but the bills are currently getting paid. Until they're not.

The bottom here is far far worse then anywhere else obtw. SEE: UNITED. We can thank Jeff Bezos for that.

I've said it before, if you don't like it here, try to leave. If you're stuck, fly turns in the right seat making $150,000. Don't upgrade and then complain.

N152SY

Smells of vote of no confidence in the MEC? 🤔