Erich,
This is the same argument that I have heard now for over a decade. "You need to be thankful that we have the current Open Flying system and senior pilots are willing to sacrifice their days off in an effort to double their paychecks. If it weren't for that then you would not have the pay raises you have"....ooops.. wait a minute...without all the open flying I might have the option to upgrade and work less days to get more pay. Actually Erich, if you look at my past posts you would see that I do not advocate banning open flying just adjusting it to our present market conditions. As you so accurately noted we are no longer growing but shrinking instead, therefore the system that worked during our company's boom years may not be best suited for the last seven years of consolidation.
Nowhere did I say you needed to be thankful, at least in my latest post. I’m not going to take the time to go back through my other posts, hence the qualifier. I was simply giving the background of the language. Still, you should understand that your current pay rate is tied to the overall productivity of the pilot group. Reduce the overall productivity of the group and management will want to reduce costs. Costs can be reduced by cutting pay.
Alternatively, we can keep productivity (and pay) the same by increasing the number of days all individuals work while reducing the number of days some individuals work. This would result in more pay for some, as well as increased time out of domicile and reduced QOL for some, who would no doubt see it as form of forced overtime without the benefit, however small, of the additional J/M pay.
As I understand it what the reduce/ban open flying in the contract group want to do is use this as a method to force management to hire more pilots, increase staffing in each seat, and drive upgrades etc. They would do this by keeping the present line construction parameters (more or less, i.e. 15 days off each month). This will result in a serious reduction in productivity. Management is unlikely to find this agreeable. It will increase costs. Further, so long as the airline is stagnant or worse, shrinking, it will benefit only that small group on the upgrade “bubble”, and if shrinking, only for a limited period of time. Once those relative few have moved up, the movement will cease (or reverse in the shrinking case), and the earning ability of all will have decreased.
I agree the system as intended is broken. I personally think the fix is to virtually eliminate management flying, and make J/M expensive enough that management will use it as it was intended. By expensive enough, I favor a sliding scale of extra pay for J/M that starts at 200% of the daily rate of pay for the 1st assigned trip and increases by a minimum of 25% per day (50% would be better) for each additional assignment on a daily basis.
Example 1: Your 1st J/M assignment for the month you receive a one day trip (less than 24 hours out of domicile) and less than 4.5 hours of flight time. You would be paid 9.0 hours.
Example 2: Your 1st J/M assignment for the month you receive a one day trip (less than 24 hours out of domicile) equal to 7.5 hours of flight time. You would be paid 14.0 hours.
Example 3: Your 2nd J/M assignment for the month you receive a one day trip (less than 24 hours out of domicile) and less than 4.5 hours of flight time. You would be paid 11.25 hours.
You get the picture.
Management should not be allowed to fly more than 3 trips per 90 days. Those should come open time prior to anyone being J/Med. Anything else should require a displacement without reassignment of the affected crewmember unless the affected crewmember chooses to be reassigned. Reassignment pay would be required on top of normal pay i.e. you would get paid for your regular trip, and paid as though you had flown an open trip for the reassignment.
