ATTENTION all JetBlue Pilots

[A350]

ualdriver:

Your opinion, while cogent, ignores the marketplace.

If JB was the onus for $120/hour Bus Captains worldwide, then why isn't your management wanting $65/hour Bus Captains like Skybus? Why didn't your management demand pay parity with MaxJet on the B767?

The marketplace determines who survives and who doesn't. While employee costs are part of the equation, so are business dynamics. JB is a mostly leisure carrier. Most legacy carriers are not. Legacy management and ALPA continue to try to make the LCC's/non-union carriers the scapegoat on why they had to desecrate the pay and working conditions of their employees.

Why, in the world of $80/bbl oil are the legacy carriers pretty profitable and JB is less profitable than when it started? Market dynamics. The legacy carriers went on a binge farming out their flying to lower total cost regionals who were ALPA represented. That made for a glut of unemployed, very qualified pilots. Too many pilots fighting for the precious few jobs causes downward pressure on wages. Right now, we are seeing the opposite (until the 65 thing) and what little upward wage pressure we had is probably gone.

A couple of final points. There is no way a 25 airplane airline has the power to bring the industry to its knees unless that is what the industry managers want to have happen. (9/11 certainly helped this along as well).

During my tenure at USAir, our ALPA leadership took the SWA contract and laid it at the feet of management and said....here.....we will sign it now. (not the SWA contract they have now) They refused. They refused because they knew two things. Pilots eat their young and there would be a lot of low hanging fruit (like the pensions) and they couldn't manage a one person fruit stand.

The ideal of the last contract +1% in the ALPA negotiating world is a thing for textbooks. It doesn't exist. The closest we came to it was in the late 90's when the dot com boom was in full swing and the fares paid by the average businessman were sky high. With the internet, I doubt we will ever see that again.

Rez: Your post is bunk. There is a large disparity between what different ALPA groups are paid to fly similar equipment.....The Kalitta guys are ALPA and they fly the B747 for $50/hour less than the UAL guys.

Merry Christmas to you as well.

A350

 

[ualdriver]

Your opinion, while cogent, ignores the marketplace.

Actually, the marketplace is EXACTLY what I'm watching.

If JB was the onus for $120/hour Bus Captains worldwide,

I don't blame JUST JetBlue for $120/hr. pensionless, crappy work rule narrowbody Captains. It was all of you collectively- JetBlue, Airtran, Frontier, and the 10's of others who didn't survive but still inflicted some pain before they left. We legacy guys died a death by a thousand cuts. JetBlue didn't have the only knife, but it was pretty sharp and one of the larger ones (still is, too).

then why isn't your management wanting $65/hour Bus Captains like Skybus? Why didn't your management demand pay parity with MaxJet on the B767?

They did! You have NO IDEA what our management wanted to do to us in bankruptcy. They wanted to undercut your rates! They wanted to split my airline in half with two separate seniority lists- one for the narrowbody guys, one for the widebody guys (can you say whipsaw?). They wanted LOTS of things they didn't get but because I had ALPA and its resources available to me, my management was unable to obtain those things and others.

The marketplace determines who survives and who doesn't. While employee costs are part of the equation, so are business dynamics.

But employee costs are a BIG part of the equation. Don't you understand that airlines like mine and yours operate on very narrow profit margins during the best of times? Don't you understand that it only takes a FEW groups of employees (like JetBlue, Virgin, SkyBus, etc.) to collectively drive down wages for an entire industry? Don't you get that yet?

JB is a mostly leisure carrier. Most legacy carriers are not. Legacy management and ALPA continue to try to make the LCC's/non-union carriers the scapegoat on why they had to desecrate the pay and working conditions of their employees.

I'm not concerned about airlines like Virgin, JetBlue, Skybus, etc., because I have some personal vendetta. The LCC's of the late 90's and early 00's and their use of discount airline labor to massively undercut the prevailing fares and wages that existed at the time are the reason we're all making the wages we are earning today. Do you think it's a coincidence that practically every airline in the industry has a wage package remarkable similar to yours?

Why, in the world of $80/bbl oil are the legacy carriers pretty profitable and JB is less profitable than when it started? Market dynamics.

Simple. JetBlue saw rapid growth because they were massively undercutting the prevailing airfares that existed in the late 90's and early 00's. They were able to do that for many reasons, but the biggest reason being because they paid their labor force wages that were DRASTICALLY lower than everyone else's. Since labor at the time was the industry's largest cost, having total labor costs that were 1/2 of everyone else's was all an airline needed to massively undermine everyone else.

Now we're in an airline world where everyone is making JetBlue wages, outsourcing maintenance to El Salvador, etc., etc., and now JetBlue doesn't look so cheap. So now you're not as profitable because everyone is as cheap as JetBlue now and offers JetBlue airfares. Of course you're not going to be growing as fast and as profitable because we're all a bunch of mini-JetBlue's in the domestic narrowbody market! It's kind of hard for JetBlue to be as successfuly when they can't depend upon the JetBlue wage advantage to subsidize their profits!

The legacy carriers went on a binge farming out their flying to lower total cost regionals who were ALPA represented. That made for a glut of unemployed, very qualified pilots. Too many pilots fighting for the precious few jobs causes downward pressure on wages. Right now, we are seeing the opposite (until the 65 thing) and what little upward wage pressure we had is probably gone.

Agree.

A couple of final points. There is no way a 25 airplane airline has the power to bring the industry to its knees unless that is what the industry managers want to have happen. (9/11 certainly helped this along as well).

Again, it wasn't just your 25 airplane operation. It was your 25 airplane operation, and AirTran's Operation, and Frontier's operation, and Western Pacific's Operation and Vanguard's Operation, and Southwest's Operation, and, and, and........The reason why JetBlue I think catches so much crap is because they CONTINUALLY take steps to screw the industry even further (E190 rates, transcon turns, etc.), while other LCC pilot groups seem to "get it" now (witness AirTran, SWA). That's why I'm happy to see you guys get organized. Maybe the JetBlue guys are starting to "get it" too? (except you?)

 

[ualdriver]

The airline is 7 years old. We don't "deserve" the right to get paid SWA wages yet because we still have to survive the infancy stage

Man I cringe when I read airline pilots post stuff like this. This has got to be the only industry in the world where the professionals who staff said industry feel it is their professional obligation to subsidize their employer's bottom line with their discounted services in order to make their fledgling business model work.

Can you imagine, for example, if I was going to open a new hospital in a community and I advertised for 1/2 price doctors, nurses, X-ray technicians, etc., etc., because my new hospital is just starting out and "can't afford" to pay the prevailing wage for the professionals required to make the hospital run? The hospital would never be able to open because they wouldn't have any staff!

But for us professionals in the airline industry, those of us entrusted with company capital worth 10's of millions of dollars, who are responsible for bringing in 10's of millions of dollars of company revenue in a given year, those of us who could be responsible for 100's of millions of potential company liability if we make a serious error in judgement, feel we have to accept substandard wages in order to help our SIX YEAR OLD companies survive? Man, I hope guys like Blue Bayou are in the minority at your company or you guys are screwed.

 

[Lear70]

It's in the Kool Aid they serve during indoc...

Seriously, I'd enjoy working for a culture like JetBlue's, but culture doesn't pay the mortgage. They've GOT to come up on the pay rates one of these days...

However, UAL Driver, your argument about why jetBlue hasn't been as profitable lately doesn't pass the smell test (although most of your other observations are spot-on).

If everyone is charging roughly the same thing for tickets (domestically) and the load factors are high, the underlying problem is cost if a company has profitability problems. One of the things you're upset about is that jetBlue's labor costs aren't high enough to help bring everyone up, but that's a non-sequitur as, since they haven't skyrocketed, the labor rates can't be the profitability problem.

I don't pretend to be a market guru, but low wages don't equal suddenly higher costs.

 

[ualdriver]

However, UAL Driver, your argument about why jetBlue hasn't been as profitable lately doesn't pass the smell test (although most of your other observations are spot-on).

He-he. I can't always be right

My point is that the reason why JetBlue isn't wildly successful now like they were in the early 00's is because we're all little domestic JetBlue's right now. Almost all of our narrowbody rates suck, almost all of our workrules suck, almost all of us don't have defined pension plans, almost all of us cut our operation to the bone, outsource our maintenance to the lowest bidder in whatever second or third world country that can pass as minimally acceptable, etc, etc. All the cost advantages they enjoyed (with their largest cost advantage being labor) are now gone. So now they're stuck, muddling along, just like the rest of us. That's my point.

 

[Lear70]

True enough. :beer:

 

[IronCityBlue]

Again, it wasn't just your 25 airplane operation. It was your 25 airplane operation, and AirTran's Operation, and Frontier's operation, and Western Pacific's Operation and Vanguard's Operation, and Southwest's Operation, and, and, and........The reason why JetBlue I think catches so much crap is because they CONTINUALLY take steps to screw the industry even further (E190 rates, transcon turns, etc.), while other LCC pilot groups seem to "get it" now (witness AirTran, SWA). That's why I'm happy to see you guys get organized. Maybe the JetBlue guys are starting to "get it" too? (except you?)

OK I'll take the hook. There always have been PLENTY of super saver carriers with extremely low labor costs. Always. Most of them fail however, because it all comes down to their revenue stream more than anything. JB now, and especially then, had an absolute joke of a network, no first class, no interlining, a pathetic frequent flyer program, no premium product, no international, no massive US Mail contract, no alliance partnership with the ability to fly anyone fron anywhere to everywhere, etc.

JB flew supersavers to FL, that's it. Later JB threw in a few transcons to keep utilization up, but was still mostly a supersaver to FL airline. Funny though it was the legacies that invented the supersaver fares, even with their higher labor costs. Because of their superior network and infinitely greater revenue opportunities (compared to the joke of a network JB) you guys could fill the belly up with mail, the front of the plane with exorbidant first class pax and the back with last minute business travellers for serious bank. With the flight already being insanely profitable, any open seat could be dumped on the open market (eventually real time through the internet without paying those pesky travel agents) for any price. The cheapest tickets I've ever bought have been on UAL, DAL and USAir, and that was WELL before JB and in the best of economic times where revenue was easy to come by.

Then along comes JetBlue and starts flying supersavers to Florida. They say they are going to fly out of JFK and the entire industry laughs at them. Every airline has ample opportunity to snipe JetBlue n the beginning and out of their own arrogance left them alone because as we know, if you can't be 3 hours in line at LGA with your 15 minute extra drive time "convienience factor" well its just not worth going, now is it? :laugh:

Then a small recession starts, followed by 9-11, which amplifies the recession and turns our sector in to an all out depression. It was never the fact that we were taking all your supersavers to FL (that you didn't even fly anyway) it was the fact that the big revenue wave of the dot com bubble your airline's business model was riding popped and ironically that same internet now became your enemy as any passenger now had access to the cheapest fare known to man on any route they wanted to fly (yet we still only flew NY-FL and a small number of transcons as compared to your global juggernaught network, but details, details).

You guys were in a tight spot with your airline's revenue collapsing out of thin air (literally what the dot com bubble revenue orgy was...900 dollar walk up coach tix for a 90 minute flight, etc) and all time high labor contracts had just been inked. Well which way do you think wages and work rules and best 3 year 60% FAE retirements amplified by insane double and triple dipping work rule scams (you know exactly what I'm talking about) were going to go? Especially the pensions, because of US law and within the parameters of labor's contracts as well, these things became self funding in the boom times (unless they were, relatively speaking, massively overfunded, which they never were) and self collapsing during the bust times.

So management makes their low ball fantasy offer and you believed you were so close to it that you agreed to whatever you had to to save your jobs, and then blame "the JetBlue's of the world" for it all. Now labor has leverage again, and management is spitting in your eye with that unprecidented quarter billion fun time give away to their prescious shareholders and telling you "see ya in 2010 suckah!" and you're still lamenting "the JetBlue's of the world" (AirTran, Virgin America, MidEx, Frontier, Sun Country, Allegiant, USA3000, etc).

So you sit patiently waiting for 2010 while the same management that is burning suitcases of your cash to heat their Tuscan villas and Telluride cabins has you thinking it was "the JetBlue's of the world" all along.

And nice little quip about our 190 rates. While I will be THE FIRST to say they need to come up further, you have absolutely zero moral justification to say anything about the rates of any Canadair or Embraer product because before JB operated their first 190 you guys gave management permission to outsource RJ700's, 705's and 900's and EMB 170/175's to low bidders that set rates for those things at a small fraction what evil JerBlue's 190 rates are. Its rediculous for you to say the 190 is a DC-9 or a 737 and should be paid as such at the very same time your contract allows that exact same plane with a few less rows (and other planes extremely close to its size) to be outsourced, in many cases to non ALPA and even non union shops, for considerably lower wages, within your company's overall revenue stream, bringing in all your international connections for bank that you use to deat dump on "the JetBlue's of the world" and depress their revenue streams at the same time they are trying to push for raises and a union contract, especially for that plane. Take your dam scope back, man. Seriouslly, take it back!! If anything is worth a summer of love, its that. Far more than pay rates or work rules, and a 16% B/C fund is probably as good a retirement as can be had anyway, so take your scope back. Make them give it back. Shut-r-down unless they do. What? Don't want to? OK, so continue to outsource "short" 190's for nothing and keep blaming JetBlue for lowering that bar. AA is at least demanding it. Why isn't UAL? Didn't you guys just elect a "rabid" new MEC? Is that even on their radar? Have you accepted defeat on that front?

If you think the "JetBlue's of the world" are out to get you and drag down your rates in amrkets you don't even copete with them in, what do you think the very same permitted outsourcing that's occuring everywhere throughout your own network, with your union's permission, every single day is going to do to your narrowbody rates? And what effect will that have on your widebody rates? Oh I forgot, its all the LCC's fault. JetBlue's pay is too low and so it yours. All we each can do it fight our hardest for improvements as fast as we can, whenever we can. Neither one of us is in the position to do nothing and wait for the other's coat tails to ride, but you're kidding yourself if you don't realize that JetBlue's first contract will take far longer than your next one.

So again, thanks for your "support" of the unionizing attempt at JetBlue. While I can assure you that if sucessful it will put pressure on JetBlue's pilot wages to come up, I hope you don't think you can sit back and wait for JetBlue to sign a 20-30% premium over your current book that you can smack down on Glen's desk and say "me too!" cause I know that you know it doesn't work like that. Even if this unionization attempt succeeds, the entire process to a first CBA won't likely happen until well after your next contract is negotiated. A rising tide floats all boats, but this time around it will be us who will be requiring your good contract to slap on our management's desk and say "me too!" not the other way around.

And while I share your praise for the AirTran pilots, its important to keep in perspective that they are fighting tooth and nail to, right now, avoid concessions. That's what their TA battle was about. Token pay table rates, but industry gutting scope and work rule concessions that more than made up for it. Thankfully they said "heck no!" and for that no AirTran pilot at a hotel bar should be allowed to pay for his/her own adult beverage until they finish the good fight. They are a source of inspiration for not only JetBlue's pilots but industry wide. But your point of "get a union get a raise" using them as an example isn't as black and white as you implied in raising the example.

So good luck and solidarity to us all. One nationwide seniority list is never going to happen, but we do need to be more unified as a profession. That, more than anything else by far, is our biggest weakness and management knows it. Shame on us, not them, for that.

 

[IronCityBlue]

Man I cringe when I read airline pilots post stuff like this. [regarding someone saying JB doesn't "deserve" SWA pay]

Gotta agree with you there. The ONLY reason we "don't deserve" SWA pay is because our management isn't as good as theirs is. As pilots we work just as hard as them and absolutely do deserve to be compensated the way they are. The notion that "we are only 7 years old and maybe when we are 35 years old like them" applies to some arguements, but when we are 35 years old the same guy will be saying "we're only 35 years old, maybe when we're a 70 year old legacy like SWA...."

We play in the open market sandbox like everyone else and are subject to its laws like everyone else. But self defeating propaganda like that has no place in this sometimes adolescent occupation we call a profession.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

If JB was the onus for $120/hour Bus Captains worldwide, then why isn't your management wanting $65/hour Bus Captains like Skybus? Why didn't your management demand pay parity with MaxJet on the B767?

They do. They want the lowest...

The marketplace determines who survives and who doesn't. While employee costs are part of the equation, so are business dynamics. JB is a mostly leisure carrier. Most legacy carriers are not. Legacy management and ALPA continue to try to make the LCC's/non-union carriers the scapegoat on why they had to desecrate the pay and working conditions of their employees.

As usual.. it is not just one thing... the LCC's are part of the puzzle. The industry was going to change anyway...

International market is where the growth is... that is something jb is missing..

Why, in the world of $80/bbl oil are the legacy carriers pretty profitable and JB is less profitable than when it started? Market dynamics. The legacy carriers went on a binge farming out their flying to lower total cost regionals who were ALPA represented. That made for a glut of unemployed, very qualified pilots. Too many pilots fighting for the precious few jobs causes downward pressure on wages. Right now, we are seeing the opposite (until the 65 thing) and what little upward wage pressure we had is probably gone.

Market forces are like natural forces. You can't stop them but you can build articfical barriers.... for us its called a CBA.

A couple of final points. There is no way a 25 airplane airline has the power to bring the industry to its knees unless that is what the industry managers want to have happen. (9/11 certainly helped this along as well).

No but a group of them can certianly change things up...

The ideal of the last contract +1% in the ALPA negotiating world is a thing for textbooks. It doesn't exist. The closest we came to it was in the late 90's when the dot com boom was in full swing and the fares paid by the average businessman were sky high. With the internet, I doubt we will ever see that again.

Maybe... we will see how we do in the up turn..

Rez: Your post is bunk. There is a large disparity between what different ALPA groups are paid to fly similar equipment.....The Kalitta guys are ALPA and they fly the B747 for $50/hour less than the UAL guys.

As I said... CBA are articfical barriers to market forces..you are talking about two totally different markets... they just happen to use 747. It's like two stores in the mall. the only thing they have in common is the sq footage.

Merry Christmas to you as well.

 

[ualdriver]

IronCity, you and I went round and round on JetBlue pay a while back. I posted probably one of the longest posts I have ever written on FI in response to what you had to say. I have ZERO intention of going through that again.

In summation of the many pages you and I wrote, however, you spent paragraph after paragraph trying to convince me, the world, or whoever was bored enough to read what we were writing that airlines like JetBlue had NOTHING to do with the collapse of wages, work rules, and retirement at the legacy carriers.

It was funny, too, because when we started our argument, you said that you were concerned about issues like cabotage. We then went round and round for a while while you blamed the demise of airline pilot wages on "bad management" and "ALPA" and "9/11" and a bunch of other things I don't remember.

At the end I asked you a simple question: If you don't feel that airlines such as JetBlue, AirTran, and Frontier and their ultra low wages and wages that were 50% less than the going rate as they existed in the early 00's, were largely responsible for the decline of pay, work rules, and retirement of the typical airline pilot, then why are you worried about cabotage? Certainly a bunch of 3rd world pilots flying for a fraction of the wages U.S. pilots are willing to fly for would certainly do no harm to our profession either. When confronted with that analogy, you then changed your position on the issue and said that you weren't concerned about cabotage. That's when I gave up.

And frankly, when I skim what you write, and you're trying to justify your PATHETIC E190 100 seat 737/DC9 by comparing your E190 rates to an outsourced 50 or 70 seat RJ rate ("and planes extremely close to its size" UFB), I see that you are still lost, and we will never agree.

The casual FI reader knows my opinion. They know yours. I'll let them decide whose arguments carry more water.

Have a nice Christmas, IronCityBlue.

 

[IB6 UB9]

It's Christmas day. I think its sad that any of us are on this board in the first place.

 

[ualdriver]

There are no holidays in the airline business.......

As an aside, I apologize for the major thread drift above. This thread was started to let JetBlue guys know that an organizing drive is starting. Hopefully, the other union guys on the forum can support these guys with their attempt to get something started.

 

[737 Pylt]

Rez: Your post is bunk. There is a large disparity between what different ALPA groups are paid to fly similar equipment.....The Kalitta guys are ALPA and they fly the B747 for $50/hour less than the UAL guys.

Merry Christmas to you as well.

A350

The Kalitta guys are Teamsters.
Everything else you put is nicely stated!
Merry Chirstmas,
737

 

[8vATE]

The only reason why that might appear that way to the casual observer is that you were seeing the union carriers come to the reality that the JetBlue's, AirTran's, and Frontier's of the world made come true. As I've repeated many, many times over, I feel that the LCC's of the late 90's and early 00's reached critical mass, using their cheap airline labor to majorly undercut the legacies of the time.
ualdriver

Funny how you forget to mention the "mother" of all LCCs.... Southwest... oh... that wouldn't fit in with your "cheap labor" argument. You would have to consider the legacy's failed business plans, crummy customer service, greedy labor and inept management.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Funny how you forget to mention the "mother" of all LCCs.... Southwest... oh... that wouldn't fit in with your "cheap labor" argument. You would have to consider the legacy's failed business plans, crummy customer service, greedy labor and inept management.

When SWA started.. they were the cheap labor. That is the seductive attraction to start ups for CEO's.. the first pay labor...

SWA has the problem of a mature pilot group with 20 year pay... the same with the legacy carriers...

jetblue is discussed b/c they are realitively new with less than 7 year pay system wide. What CEO wouldn't want that.. but in time jb will have 20 year pay as well.

One reason CEO's like to implement B scales..