AS Furlough Mitigation

[Going2Baja]

Well, according to many pilots senior to me, being furloughed is a normal part of being an airline pilot. I and my family should sacrifice one for the team. Why should feeding my family get in the way of a senior pilot doing VSA for premium time. Us bottom dwellers should suck it up.

I feel for you Mamma. From this date on I will look out for myself and my family. This includes my crew. Sorry senior capt - want to get home today to get to your 3rd vacation home? Don't think so - I'll park this a/c here! The senior have sold us out for their own benefit and the CO is all about the $$$. Forget about all that "core value" crap they made us memorize and regurgitate for the dog and pony show. We will have our time in the future and the circle will swing.

The union and MEC did try to negotiate this....The CO failed us all. They have NO intention of treating us like family and actually want to divide us further. F' this place! This is the worse pilot group I have worked with in 20+ years in the biz! (I retract this if the MOU passes.) Good luck to us all!!

Baja.

 

[Green Banana]

It is a company, not a family. Expect it to act as so. This pilot group holds all the power. The fact that we can save our own jobs without this MOU and choose not to makes me sick.

 

[Ih8AFYesmen]

Baja,
I feel your pain, I really do and yes, you do have the right to type whatever you want to on these web boards. To say $hit like "this is the worst pilot group...(I retract this statement if the MOU passes)" gives you no credibility.
IMHO, the MOU is not about furlough mitigation and really has nothing to do with greedy VSAers. I know it's difficult to think straight when your seniority is on the chopping blocks. One thing I've learned about this management is that they just don't give a rat's a$$ about you and me.They just want more from us, using the junior guys as hostages. They are pushing our buttons to see how much more they can get away with. This MOU has no furlough protection, period. It's all about taking control of our lives, which gives the company more scheduling efficiencies, which in turn will possibly cost more jobs in the long run. I won't go into it, but you can figure it out on your own if you haven't already. I'm sorry that you guys are being used as pawns.

 

[igneousy2]

Baja,
I feel your pain, I really do and yes, you do have the right to type whatever you want to on these web boards. To say $hit like "this is the worst pilot group...(I retract this statement if the MOU passes)" gives you no credibility.
IMHO, the MOU is not about furlough mitigation and really has nothing to do with greedy VSAers. I know it's difficult to think straight when your seniority is on the chopping blocks. One thing I've learned about this management is that they just don't give a rat's a$$ about you and me.They just want more from us, using the junior guys as hostages. They are pushing our buttons to see how much more they can get away with. This MOU has no furlough protection, period. It's all about taking control of our lives, which gives the company more scheduling efficiencies, which in turn will possibly cost more jobs in the long run. I won't go into it, but you can figure it out on your own if you haven't already. I'm sorry that you guys are being used as pawns.

You seem pretty level headed but I was wondering...you said you were voting no because of a phone call you got from someone...they said they will just furlough more after they get what they want...someone quoted the MOU pointing out that the information you received in the phone call was wrong...so my question to you is why are you STILL voting no when IF the company does in fact furlough US anyway then you can just cancel the deal...why are we falling for this fear mongering.

For me the difference is this...the company is a business and I EXPECT the company to try to extract as much work out of me as possible for as little money as possible. The Union is supposed to be working for ALL of US. That is why I pay 1.9% a check.

The MEC decided to send this out without a recommendation and leave it up to the pilot group. My representative has decided to take it upon himself to make sure I get furloughed not by presenting factual information to his constituates but by pumping up egos, and from what I can tell spreading false information.

Like I said earlier...it comes down to egos. Do we vote this down to make a point...or do we try to save 30 jobs. It is GB's job to provide the required amount of flying at the lowest cost possible. It is OUR jobs to protect the jobs.

Our chance to make a point was with a no vote on the TA. 85% let the opportunity slip. Voting this down will prove nothing to the company other than we are all willing to eat our young. Are you willing to make my family suffer as a cheap way for you to make a point?

Do you really think the company CARES one way or the other if we take this deal? They presented us with a cost-neutral proposal...either way they are going to save the money that they want to save.period.end of story.

Good luck

 

[dashtrash]

It is a company, not a family. Expect it to act as so. This pilot group holds all the power. The fact that we can save our own jobs without this MOU and choose not to makes me sick.

No doubt about it. We'll make a Union out of this "Association" someday. It will start in December 2012.

 

[Mookie]

I feel for you Mamma. From this date on I will look out for myself and my family. This includes my crew. Sorry senior capt - want to get home today to get to your 3rd vacation home? Don't think so - I'll park this a/c here!

This is the worse pilot group I have worked with in 20+ years in the biz! (I retract this if the MOU passes.) Good luck to us all!!

Baja.

then quit...please quit, save someone else's job since you hate it here so much. you are miserable, you will make everyone miserable around you, and you have now vowed to screw up operations in a selfish manner. If you are so enlightened maybe you should go run a Ponzi scheme or something.

seriously....if this is the way you act in the cockpit, you shouldn't have an ATP.

Mookie

 

[Snapshot]

This MOU has no furlough protection, period.

Really?

You didn't even get to line 27 before you decided to stop reading and vote, eh?

Here's what you missed : "The adoption of this program will mitigate thirty (30) pilots from furlough and thirteen (13) pilots from downgrade who were forecast to be furloughed or downgraded............."

Of course, it is also clear that it will die if they decide to restart the months long process of going through another round. Also very clear that, no matter what, it dies on Jan 1 2012.

You're going to have to find something else to tell yourself it's okay to throw 30 families under the bus.
Contact Hornibrook, his email is what is going to kill this thing, he must have a file cabinet full of justification mantras. Real easy for y'all to play Martyr with someone else's livelihood.
"Ask yourself, what's next?" Not his job or yours, that's what.

 

[Going2Baja]

then quit...please quit, save someone else's job since you hate it here so much. you are miserable, you will make everyone miserable around you, and you have now vowed to screw up operations in a selfish manner. If you are so enlightened maybe you should go run a Ponzi scheme or something.

seriously....if this is the way you act in the cockpit, you shouldn't have an ATP.

Mookie

Sorry Mook - No chance of quitting here, I have a family of three I need to provide for, five if you include the dogs. And if giving the capt crap for flying VSA or maxing his sched to 85+ when guys are on furlough is bad then I stand guilty. My rant isn't at the 15% that voted no on the CBA or the guys that are flying min sched to put pressure on the CO - it's against the greedy SOB's (Capt & F/O.) There was a guy on the dial in that went on and on about "feeling" for the furloughed guy but he wasn't about to give a dime to the CO that he has worked for. Call it what you will, but that dime out of your pocked is saving families. I'm not on the chopping block, I'm fighting for my classmates. I'll be in ANC in Oct and I'll be pissed...oh well. I just can't wait to see my family 10 days a month and spend 20 in th Arctic. Oh well - it's what I have to do to provide. If there was a better job avail would I take it - hell yeah. But I'm not stupid and I wouldn't flush my sen#. Get it through your head...the CO is trying to whipsaw us and they are doing ONE HELL OF A GREAT JOB! It would have been great to vote on a better MOU, or even better to just drop the lines to 75 without all the tied on BS...but that's not what happened. SO here we are deciding if we can take less pay to save of brothers and most are openly saying NO.

And for the LAST time - This MOU WILL SAVE 30 Furloughs!. If the CO decides it wants to furlough additional pilots then this MOU GOES AWAY.

This VOTE is ABOUT SAVING 30 FAMILIES PERIOD!!

Baja.

 

[8v8ter]

I too am appalled at all of the people considering voting no on this. The MOU clearly states 30 furloughs WILL be mitigated in exchange for the monthly max ONLY being reduced to 80-83 hours, and VSA only being 100%, you can still do it if you're that needy you just won't get premium pay. The argument that this is what the company wanted all along makes no sense. They would prefer everyone fly 90+ and furlough more, thereby reducing costs with fewer full time employee benefits, etc. Don't fall for the conspiracy theorists.

 

[qxpilot]

I try not to post on these websites very often but this is just driving me nuts. This company is unbelievable. It basically falls on the company to stop these furloughs and they look at the mighty dollar and thats it. I went to the LAX base meeting and asked Gary Beck straight up what this furlough would save the company. 12 million was his answer. I said OK and then I told him that you will have 8 or 9 percent of your pilot group on furlough and are totally pissed off. I mean I will never be the same after this. I told him that I will never do anything for this place again when and if I return and probably the 8 percent won't either. And we are the guys that are going to be here for the next 30 years. I told him to put a price tag on that. No answer. It's clear this management group doesn't understand what an asset happy employees are. So then it falls on the Union to save our jobs. Unfortunately, it sounds like the company wasn't really negotiating this MOU, but when the union comes out and doesn't tell this pilot group to vote YES for this thing? And the SEA union reps vote no for it? Really? Thanks guys. So now it falls to the my peers and the pilot group to save our jobs. And all I hear is a bunch of people that haven't really read this thing and are uneducated about it. Very frustrating. Atleast the Union has tried to help a little bit this week about educating everybody and I hope everyone does the right thing. It sucks the company has done this to us, but I hope you can look beyond that and think about all the families out on the street with no hopes of finding a job. It would be a different story if the economy was in a different place right now. But I find it a little hard to feel bad for senior people crying about second step, VSA and having to wait a week longer to get their schedule when you have families falling apart over this. I guess the first question I'll be asking the next time I fly with someone is how they voted for the MOU.