Asa pbs ta

[Tarzan]

Noise,
I understand your point you are making. But what about our current contract would you change besides getting more pay? Stitch up a few scheduling holes? More days off? The biggest complaints I've heard about the current contract fall into the schedule realm. Hopefully, ALPA (If I were running things) will use this time to fix these things. Probably have an additional day a month on top of this.

Point is, ASA basically has one of the leading contracts in the regional side of the house. The company is looking for some help here. I am not advocating bending over and giving the company free rein to abuse us. However, I am trying to keep from the militancy about the pilot group being unwilling to bend to help secure our future within SkyWest Inc. Give a little and from the current track record, we get a little bit as well.

These guys are looking for some wiggle room to be able to increase profits. Profits aren't as bad you think either. We get some of that in return as well. If we are able to get our net margins up, we could wind up with considerably more every quarter. And there is more pay for you as well. So how is that bending over if we get more money and more days off?

In closing, the union hasn't helped the cause one iota. They have done nothing but talk down and PBS from day one. Now, they suddenly jump out from behind the door and yell, "Trick or PBS!" You along with many others are reacting exactly how I would expect after this time. Give some time and go to a road show. You may be pleasantly surprised.... Or you might not be. Either way, give it a look before you start sniping.

 

[USCtrojan]

Noise,
I understand your point you are making. But what about our current contract would you change besides getting more pay? Stitch up a few scheduling holes? More days off? The biggest complaints I've heard about the current contract fall into the schedule realm. Hopefully, ALPA (If I were running things) will use this time to fix these things. Probably have an additional day a month on top of this.

Point is, ASA basically has one of the leading contracts in the regional side of the house. The company is looking for some help here. I am not advocating bending over and giving the company free rein to abuse us. However, I am trying to keep from the militancy about the pilot group being unwilling to bend to help secure our future within SkyWest Inc. Give a little and from the current track record, we get a little bit as well.

These guys are looking for some wiggle room to be able to increase profits. Profits aren't as bad you think either. We get some of that in return as well. If we are able to get our net margins up, we could wind up with considerably more every quarter. And there is more pay for you as well. So how is that bending over if we get more money and more days off?

In closing, the union hasn't helped the cause one iota. They have done nothing but talk down and PBS from day one. Now, they suddenly jump out from behind the door and yell, "Trick or PBS!" You along with many others are reacting exactly how I would expect after this time. Give some time and go to a road show. You may be pleasantly surprised.... Or you might not be. Either way, give it a look before you start sniping.

Great post Tarzan.

Trojan

 

[Noise]

The point is Tarzan that the company is always going to be looking for "help". As long as people like you are willing to just be a push over and offer them whatever "help" they need we are going to keep getting pushed around and will never get anywhere. Good luck with your compaign. I'm not saying we need to be militant, but as far as I can see we just take concession after concession. What our pilot group really need is unity. With the current environment it doesn't even matter anyways, as probably only 40% of the pilots will vote anyways. For example, how many nomination cards have been sent in? I agree with you that ASA has one of the better contracts for a regional. However, this does not mean that we need to just accept minimal enhancements just because it would "help" the company.

 

[Tarzan]

Where have we started taking concessions? You claim not to be militant yet, you make the claim that we are steadily sliding backwards. Minimal enhancements? Yes, it may be minimal but it is an enhancement that gives our company leverage to bid against the underbelly of the industry namely Pinnacle and Mesa. Those spineless pilot groups seem hell bent on undermining us all in the name of growth and whatever else they are being promised. Doing things like this at least gives us the opportunity to compete. If we can't compete, what good is it to be here? Be like Comair? Eagle?

 

[SLUF4]

I might be willing to sign off on PBS if they can fix the ready reserve system and up the min day to 4.0. Other than that I'm already being jerked around enough on a daily basis by scheduling to sign off on another tool for them to abuse us with. Has anyone noticed we are still doing about 860 flights a day except on the weekends? Things are supposed to pickup more in October, Nov, and Dec. according to SH's email a while back. It seems like they need more efficiency to be able to operate all these flights with the reduced staffing we have.

 

[79%N1]

. Has anyone noticed we are still doing about 860 flights a day except on the weekends? Things are supposed to pickup more in October, Nov, and Dec. according to SH's email a while back. It seems like they need more efficiency to be able to operate all these flights with the reduced staffing we have.

And yet there are nearly 80 LESS LINES on the 200 for Oct!!!! I can't believe more people are not making noise about this!!! That is a drastic cut, and was done to reduce the red arrow days. I, personally would rather have a few more red arrows and have my line back!

 

[ace6453]

And yet there are nearly 80 LESS LINES on the 200 for Oct!!!! I can't believe more people are not making noise about this!!! That is a drastic cut, and was done to reduce the red arrow days. I, personally would rather have a few more red arrows and have my line back!

You are right, this is a crock. I love how the union says that "the company has agreed to decrease reserve levels for initial open time". BULLSH*T. The union is full of retards if they actually believe that. 80 fewer lines means 80 more reserves and they use the same coverage, but now don't have red arrow days.

 

[Tarzan]

I was concerned about this happening. We have to find a happy medium here with this issue. Everybody will not be happy but we need to make it bearable for everyone. Do we hose the fewer junior Captains and First Officers and have more reserves to keep line values up with better reserve coverage or do we lessen coverage, get more lines with lower values and increase the red arrow days?

How about setting a reserve coverage of say 15% and letting the rest of the chips fall where they may? I believe this where we fell down on the scheduling holes. I haven't seen where the company would be required to maintain a set amount of coverage as a percentage.

Maybe allowing for 200 folks to get dual qualified to help with reserve coverage across the board with 70-76 seat over ride? Let this voluntary for those who want it?

There have to be a bunch of ways to overcome this stuff. Guess it is time for some phone calls to my reps if they even care about what I think.

 

[maxcackel]

I can't believe you people are looking at the email our ALPA reps sent out and are all the sudden convinced that PBS is the new answer for ASA to get future growth.

What positive things are we getting from PBS?

A raise in minimum duty day from 3.75 to 3.86? Skywest's min day rig is 3.86 and last time I checked they don't have to ship 2% of their pay to a union. I do not understand why we caved in yet again and didn't ask for something more significant like a 4, 4.25, or 4.50 hr min day. Why ask for something that our sister carrier already has and not ask for more? This is stupid!

Bottom line, we are going to get screwed as far as vacation is concerned no matter how you look at it. For example: A pilot bids for a week of vacation the week before (or after) Thanksgiving (or any other holiday for that matter) and elects to drop trips on either side of their vacation. Will the company just drop the trips like they currently do or will they say that you can't drop a trip over a holiday? Is the company going to have the "restricted days" like they currently have in the contract with the addition of PBS? I guess we just wait for the road shows to see.

The other question is how much money is ASA saving with the implementaton of PBS? I have have heard 8M/yr (ALPA) on the high side and 2M/yr (Company) on the low side. From what we are being offered as incentives for taking PBS this in no way equates to even 2M.

By taking this PBS we lock ourselves into a 1% raise per year. This is a pay cut each and every year. This does NOT even come close to covering cost of living. Do you want to be locked into a contract until 2014 or later? Thats where were headed by signing this.

I can not believe all the kool aid BS I hear in the lounge these days. ASA will get new flying with us getting PBS, We need to be more competitive. As far as I am concerned pilot costs account for a very very small percentage of the overall cost structure at Skywest inc.

I'm sure that this doesn't matter because all that will happen is people will complain after this thing gets voted in after we have about 300 people actually vote. The vote that we had for the furlough assistance fund was absolutely pathetic! How many people voted, 265 out of 1800? This is going to be the same ____ different day. I look forward to hearing all you morons complain, and how you all voted no, just like what happened after we signed this contract even though only 160 other ppl besides me voted no.


NOISE

Excellent post Noise, spread the word. 3.86 is like 6 minutes of pay, big whop. And a contract extention? I would rather fix some scheduling problems a year earlier. The new swap and drop is better but not worth pbs and not going to be as helpful with very little open time due to pbs. Like I said tie it to growth, everyone wins.

 

[79%N1]

They had better care what you think!! They are there to represent you. I think the problem with this group is that they may not care..........