Our contract only has pay rates for 20-35 seaters and 50-59 seaters. With any new aircraft our union and management must meet 90 days before planned delivery and negotiate a new rate. That has been going on rigth now. The company has given us 2 proposals:
1. Accept the same rate as the 50 seaters, keep the current pay scale. The price for this is a 2 year extension to our current contract. Since we have one of the worst contracts in the industry, no one will go along with that.
2. A new pay scale at a slightly reduced rate for the 44 seater. Again no one is willing to accept that, it is looking like they want a 12% reduction to our current rate.
Hopefully we can come to an agreement to keep them at least at our current rate without any additional time to our contract, they are the same airplane really. Unfortunately if we can't come to an agreement with management we go before an abritrator and he decides a new pay rate. I don't hold out much hope if that happens. Unfortunately NWa has had this CRJ certified under a new certificate, not simply removed seats like other airlines have. Its the same plane, but since its a different certificate, to get around NWA scope clause, I'm not too optomistic if an abritrator gets it.