Ottolillienthal

That is the multi billion dollar question

We are in a lose-lose situation if we are solely looking at delta plus a dollar.

Take delta minus two dollars and keep scope the same.

There is a "price" that management will settle for to leave scope the same.

The wild card is this: What can management negotiate with it's myriad of "feeder" airlines that fly RJ's? What rates of pay will the regional pilots who are currently stuck in the middle of their careers with no possible way out unless they go the ex-pat route and go overseas to see a mainline size jet and pay rates?

The regional pilots are getting increasingly impatient with the lack of progress in their career path. They are stuck at bottom feeder airlines, milking every ounce of love and passion they once had for aviation out of them. The blood sucking leaches in management will stop at nothing at putting corks in everyone's career path bottle. The bottom, middle, and upper seniroity brackets of regionals, and mainline carriers alike are all hurt by management's desire to throw up monetary speedbumps in our careers.

Dollar for dollar we went back 25 plus years in standard of living in the post 9-11 contractural give back enviornment. We simply MUST get back our standard of living, and that means redefining our career expectations and holding ALPA accountable for negotiating and enforcing contracts that protect our profession.

tsquare

So then your solution is the CAL scope at all costs? You are right that management has their price, but the question is, what is yours? I am not flaming here, but the mountain that you have to climb in recapturing all that flying that UAL has is quite large. I would be willing to bet that DAL - $1 won't even come close to getting that. Good luck selling the super duper premium guys on that. (DAL/NWA joke) Regardless, I could be wrong, but that is a whole different ballgame than allowing the 76s that we did. The key to ours is the ratios that trigger more mainline flying. If those ratios are big enough, the RJ flying can be controlled. If they are not considered, then the numbers are absolutely unacceptable. They are the key to the whole thing. Just food for thought.

shiznit

How does "ALPA", i.e. your own elected pilots and their decisions along with membership ratification procedures, have to do with what YOUR group negotiates?

It's so easy to blame somebody else for the problem..

I do agree that you need to keep your OWN elected reps accountable, but that isn't reflective of the greater organization.

Hope you guys land a solid deal that surpasses DL, FX, and SW.

TEXASTONE

About scope. It's not just the pilot and flight attendant rates that drive management to outsource flying to the regionals. It's all the "below the wing" employees that contribute to the cost of operating a flight (dispatch, gate agents, maintenance, rampers, etc)

One item that I was told was being negotiated was the idea of UAL pilots flying the 70/90 seaters but all other aspects would be outsourced from UAL. Similar to how CAL pilots can fly air mic flying but the other employee groups cannot come over to cal without being hired on the cal side. For example, UAL pilots fly the airplanes but all other employee groups work for Skywest, etc. The company has stated even if the pilots flew for free they would still lose money because of the higher labor costs incurred by the other employee groups.

So, why should the pilots take the brunt of concessions for other employee groups? Let the FAs, agents, and other employee groups negotiate their own scope, or outsourcing. Lets negotiate our own contracts and let the other groups do theirs. In past blastmails J Pierce said we need to think "outside the box" about scope. This is pretty outside the box...i am not saying this is going to happen, but it has been discussed AFAIK.

Disclaimer: i do not claim to know anything. Just repeating what I have heard.

Ottolillienthal

You couldn't be farther off the mark. You MUST hold ALPA National firmly accountable. Why? They set National policy. They set the National agenda. The goals, the strategy, and the tool box are all up in Herndon.

It is extremely difficult to blame "somebody else" for the problem. It is not an easy thing to do, because in your heart you want them up at National to do the right thing. They ultimately sign off on and approve any cba that your MEC approves, and the membership approves. National has the final say so.

National has a problem. It has a conflict of interest that it is not honest about. Only after hours and hours of discussing it with the National lawyers will they admit it, but, I have gotten them to do so. But, even after they admit they are chasing the same revenue stream for the regionals and the mainline carriers they pass it off as "just business."

Why? Because it is. ALPA National gets paid by dues money either way.

You go and ask Art Luby and Jim Johnson and press them on it. ALPA, if it had something in the National Constitution that said it would give defference to Mainline carriers on issues involving pay, benefits, and scope protections you might see, then and only then ALPA act like a real mainline union.

It is probably time for mainline airlines to have a union and a seperate one for regionals. The reason why management teams are so successful here is because they have succeeded in luring away many an ALPA volunteer, and they understand ALPA's buerocracy better than all the MEC's put together. They know ALPA can't react to market conditions because ALPA can't change fast enough.

The leadership in ALPA needs to ask themselves what will the industry look like in 20 years and ask themselves further if they will be part of the problem, or part of the solution that puts this train back on the tracks.

Getting paid when management wants to change scope only works one time. That one trick pony only works one time. After we give up our scope language, then the next time management wants something what will we give then? Once the revenue stream is gone, it is gone for good.

Now that Maytag has moved to Mexico, how many US made Maytags are being sold? How many jobs were permanently lost? Once you outsource the job, it is gone forever.

APC225

DAL is already a far piece down this road. Once our contract is signed I agree we should join with them and others to form a separate group.

syd111

No thanks would not like to join with Delta.

Regularguy

Otto are you Neil from lual? Your post seem a lot like his.

Captain Bligh

This $400 mil figure keeps hitting my inbox from various disconnected sources. Now there seems to be some recurring rumor that payment of it will be split, $250M at ratification and the balance paid out only after SLI and a significant portion of the retro in stock. So, if no one from the NC is talking where do these rumors start and why are they so specific???

On an even funnier note, I had a reserve L-CAL FO try to tell a group of us in DEN this little tidbit. "Because of the huge disparity between our pay and Delta rates, especially as it concerns new hire L-CAL pilots at the bottom of the longevity range, FO retro pay calculations would exceed top of the scale CA retro pay calculations."

WHO MAKES THIS STUFF UP?!!!!!!!!

A320

I'm surprised that nobody has used the old "I had the MEC chairman on my jump seat and he said ......". That falls into the same I Know Jack Shiite category as when people use the term "Done Deal".