ATTENTION all JetBlue Pilots

[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..

 

[A350]

737Pylt:

My bad....thanks for the correction. My point, however, it that union pilot does not necessarily equal pay parity with your compatriots at other airlines.

There have always been a lot of airlines that make more, some less.

Ualdriver: I did 17 years on the union side of the fence working for a commuter, USAir mainline, and then a regional before JB. I resigned from USAir to stay at JB. After watching what happened to my career, and the thousands of others who had their careers handed to them after 9/11, I will stay on this side for a few years and see what is best. I am not anti-union....but say no to ALPA all the time.

BTW....you think you got your a$$ handed to you? You took a paycut and lost your pension. I lost my job, lost my pension, and had to start over again. You can whine about what happened to you till your blue in the face (no pun intended).....but the airlines you complain the most about became havens for the guys that were cut off the bottom of the lists of all those legacy carriers. I for one am glad they were there to catch all the good pilots who found themselves on the outside looking in for no good reason other than when they were hired.

A350

 

[XBOEINGDRVR]

Well said Blue Bayou and A350,
I agree 100 %. Were not ready for a union, maybe a few years down the road, but for now... I will never vote for one. I been in a house union and ALPA, and neither were worth a sh$t....

 

[PHXFLYR]

skywest has no union, they have a group of pilots that talk to management about issues but they are not a union. at JB there is a similar paper tiger called the pvgc.

JBPA is a union like SWPA,IPA,APA or NPA. ..

And my personal all time "favorite" , USAPA.....

PHXFLYR

 

[maxblast72]

Remember Bayou you in your cushy top 400 seniority with your" i got mine" nice 150K plus salary are the minority at jb.. There are another near 1600 here that want thing better for the majority.

We have the same problem over here at Airtran with our 10% of the seniority list (10 years plus seniority). We have had 3 votes this year (TA2 rejection vote, presidential recall, and new president election) that have the shown the senior guys they no longer in control of this place.

Our management loves to brag how well Airtran pilots are paid to the media and to the analysts during earnings conference calls. They talk about how some of our guys make over $200K. What they don't tell the analysts is that only 50 guys out of 1500 make anywhere close to that. It is all spin and management is trying to convince the analysts that we already make good money so future contracts should not increase Airtran's CASM significantly.

If what ClickClickBoom is saying about senior guys at Jetblue is true, I would recommend you Jetblue guys get a union in place so the voice of the junior 1600 is heard which should result in leveling the playing field from top to bottom.

 

[PHXFLYR]

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

Kalitta guys are Teamsters,not ALPA.

PHXFLYR

 

[clickclickboom]

It always easy for the guys at jb making 150-200k a year to say that we dont need a union. They had it made walk into a job 3-6 month upgrade to the left seat. 20-30k profit sharing checks, stock options with multiple splits with some shares as low as $1

All the while they sit in their left seat flying their cushy dead heads to san or cun with operates back for 10-12 plus credit hours per day working 9-12 days with 100 hours of credit and 18-20 days off.

Their happines makes it near impossible for them to relate to the 1 yr 190 fo making 400% less barely taking home 40k gross and only having 12 days off a month with no commutable trips. Or the 2 -3 year FO on the bus that can only make 70k unless they are whor-es that still have probably 5 more years to go with another 4+ years of reserve just to be a junior lineholder ( And thats if their lucky )

There need to be a reasonable living for all pilots here not just the top 300 or so.. Dont get me wrong I am thrilled that you senior guys have a great deal going but please dont eat your young remember for every 1 pilot at JB that has it great there are 6 that dont and when it comes time to vote the majority will speak.

Every pilot at JB can work to make this a career company the senior guy in the left seat and the most junior guy to walkthrough the doors in mco.

We have won every award out there have the most fuel efficient airline in the sky, the 2nd most productive workforce, and the cheapest labor statistics out there.

2000 professionals with a voice will disallow our inept management to finance their stupid mistakes on our backs.

40 million would give every pilot in this company a $20,000 raise annually.. This company can hand out that much in vouchers in a 24 hour period and still say sorry..

 

[SNOWBUM]

AND BACK ON THE THREAD"

JAN 14TH MEETING. ORGANIZATION UNDERWAY


www.jetbluepilots.org

JPBA

JetBlue pilots association

register, join, be part of the process, it's our company and our union.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

BTW....you think you got your a$$ handed to you? You took a paycut and lost your pension. I lost my job, lost my pension, and had to start over again. You can whine about what happened to you till your blue in the face (no pun intended).....but the airlines you complain the most about became havens for the guys that were cut off the bottom of the lists of all those legacy carriers. I for one am glad they were there to catch all the good pilots who found themselves on the outside looking in for no good reason other than when they were hired.

A350

Could it be....that in part, the reason why you lost your job at the legacies was in fact due do the "havens"...

Talk about Stockholm.....


Seriously though.....

Saying jetblue doesn't need a union now is like waiting till the hurricane comes to start shopping for insurance...

Therefore...

AND BACK ON THE THREAD"

JAN 14TH MEETING. ORGANIZATION UNDERWAY


www.jetbluepilots.org

JPBA

JetBlue pilots association

register, join, be part of the process, it's our company and our union.

 

[rayford steele]

Well said Blue Bayou and A350,
I agree 100 %. Were not ready for a union, maybe a few years down the road, but for now... I will never vote for one. I been in a house union and ALPA, and neither were worth a sh$t....

I disagree. Based on those I have flown with and spoke with I would say the following is an accurate yes vote FOR an in house union:
Seniority
1-200 30%
200-400 50%
400-600 75%
600-1900 90%

That's my guesstimate.

 

[scarlet]

What happens if Delta comes with ALPA=bottom of the list??? It an option Delta is looking at !!!

 

[CaptainSpaz]

What happens if Delta comes with ALPA=bottom of the list??? It an option Delta is looking at !!!

Blast it! Why didn't I think of that?

 

[IronCityBlue]

you spent paragraph after paragraph trying to convince me...that airlines like JetBlue had NOTHING to do with the collapse of wages, work rules, and retirement at the legacy carriers.

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?

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.

Yeah I guess we both tent to get a bit long winded, but hey, we gotta give our fans their 10 bucks worth right? imp:

Anyway I will also try not to rehash everything, but I wanted to answer your questions.

First I'm going to agree with you about what I think was your main point, but then totally ruin the moment by agreeing with it only on a technicality.

Did JetBlue (and the infamous "JetBlues of the world") have anything to do with the wages you ended up getting? Sure. However, so did all the airlines that took cuts, which was basically all of them except Delta for the first 3 years of the last downturn, and then they too also took cuts, but I guess all that was okay because some airlines were here first. Seniority realy is everything. There is no scenario immaginable that would have prevented negative wage pressure from new start up airlines during a massive downturn other than 100% iron clad pro big 6 regulation. That's not a reality and is therefore irrelevant.

If after 9-11 happened, it became illegal for any airline other than the big 6 to fly domestic passengers, the cuts probably wouldn't have been as deep. So in that respect you are right. However, if you add up every single LCC at the time, the ASM's in their entirety were microscopic compared to the footprints of the legacy airlines and that's my point. Was there a JetBlue effect to your negotiations? Sure. But it was 1/100th (okay, maybe 5/100th's?) but you can't ignore the economies of scale here. If JB had an effect, are you saying it would make no difference if JB had 1 plane or 500 planes like SWA? Of course it makes a massive difference.

So for you to claim that JetBlue (and the JetBlue's of the world) contributed to the subsequent post 9-11 pay paradigm is both technically correct (they did) and extremely over emphasised (the percentage of the effect that can be attributed to them is much smaller than you are asserting).

And besides that, if JB was paying your pre concession wages and work rules at that time and was still very profitable, you still would have had to take deep cuts because your company was reeling from a general recession and an aviation depression. We all talk tough about "full pay til the last day" or "not one nickle, not one job" because talk is cheap, and while we as a profession can and do from time to time make our airlines bleed as punishment for being treated unfairly, when we are actually faced with a choice of liquidation or concessions, we as a profession almost always choose concessions.

Likewise, if JB (and all the JBOTW's) were paying half what they were at that time, but ALL the other Legacy airlines had managed to avoid cuts, you would have not had to take anywhere near as deep cuts, though you still would have had to give some. Again, its a matter of degree and the JB effect on nationwide wage pressures was miniscule compared to what you are making it out to be.

Now as to why I worry about Cabotage. Its not so much the Air China's and Mexicana's I worry about right now. Its the Lufthansas, British Airways, Air France's and KLM's of the world. And I worry about them not because of their low pilot labor costs. Quite the contrary. I worry about them because if we ever truly get 100% open skies (cabotage) there will be so much competition all at once from established existing infrastructures our US pilot labor force may collapse. Oh I forgot, we can fight over a few scraps at the almighty LHR like that's somehow worth it. To me cabotage is a basic issue of national soveriegnty. I don't care if the intruding airline has lower, equal or significantly higher labor costs, I don't want it here and believe its our duty as a nation to protect some basic level of industry and infrasctructure. I am pro competition, but anti giving away the store to foreigners. Pilot labor costs should be our national issue that we work out as US workers on a level playing field. There is no reason to give away another domestic industry to other nations.

And once again regarding the 190. You can not claim the 190 is a 737 but say the 170/175/CRJ700/CRJ705/CRJ900/CRJ1000 is "just an RJ". Further more, the cancerous proliferation of jets larger than 50 seats was 100% the fault of legacy pilot groups and no one else, and the vast majority of that "permitted outsourcing" came outside of bankruptcy in acts of pure ignorance, stupidity, arrogance and greed.

You can't give your management the right to outsource the 170 (and bigger) aircraft at any price with no floor, to union and non union shops alike, and then act high and mighty about how 190 rates should be so much higher. If management could convince Boeing to take a plug out of your 500's and make it seat as many as a large CRJ or 170/175 are certified to seat, would you allow it to be outsourced for current RJ rates? Its the exact same thing. You have a rabid new MEC (supposedly) and CAL isholding fast to 50 seat scope and AA is pushing for 100% scope. Where is the UAUA pilot's position? To me without scope nothing else matters. I'd even call it a "full pay til the last day" non negotiable item.

 

[motch]

Probably a strange question but here it goes..

Even when JB pilots unionize (which I've always expected).. Why wouldn't they be stapled below any seniority list if a merger or buyout occured?

They were not a union carrier when they started employment at JB, so why would they deserve anything less than a staple?

I imagine that a buyout or merger is still a long way away, but it is something to think about.

 

[ualdriver]

Did JetBlue (and the infamous "JetBlues of the world") have anything to do with the wages you ended up getting? Sure. However, so did all the airlines that took cuts,

Totally, totally disagree. I was there when my management insisted that UAL was the legacy that had the greatest amount of LCC exposure in the early 00's, and they DEFINITELY were not concerned about the pilot pay, work rules, and retirement packages at DAL, AMR, and CAL. They weren't the ones using dicount labor to undercut us. Managment, however, was very concerned about JetBlue's, Airtran's, SWA's, and Frontier's. And looking at the public numbers that were available at the time, I could see why. We were being massively undercut, and the LCC labor forces were subsidizing it!

However, if you add up every single LCC at the time, the ASM's in their entirety were microscopic compared to the footprints of the legacy airlines and that's my point.

My point is that you don't have to match a legacy's ASM's mile for mile to have an effect. To argue that the JetBlue's, Airtran's, and Frontier's of the were only a certain percentage of the ASM's flown by the big legacies and therefore they had little to no effect on trashing yields in overlapping markets is ridiculous. Using that logic, I guess UAL shouldn't be concerned at all about Virgin's growth in SFO. I mean, c'mon! Virgin's ASM's are only a fraction of UAL's! What damage could Virgin possibly do with their $95/hr A320 Captains, right? I would LOVE to have this conversation again if Virgin sets up shop in JFK. No worries for JetBlue management there since Virgin would be so much smaller than JetBlue operation in JFK! Your implication that an airline needs a matching ASM for ASM presence is just plain wrong, and in my opinion taints many of the other arguments made in your post.

We all talk tough about "full pay til the last day" or "not one nickle, not one job" because talk is cheap, and while we as a profession can and do from time to time make our airlines bleed as punishment for being treated unfairly, when we are actually faced with a choice of liquidation or concessions, we as a profession almost always choose concessions.

The only guys that talk tough are the guys that don't understand what unionism can and cannot do concerning pilot wage, work rules, and retirement and the reality of business. You've never seen me type those words (full pay....last day).

Now as to why I worry about Cabotage......

I'm more concerned about third world pilots coming flying aircraft within my country for third world wages. But I guess as long as these airlines don't get as big (ASM-wise) as all of us, we have nothing to worry about!

And once again regarding the 190. You can not claim the 190 is a 737 but say the 170/175/CRJ700/CRJ705/CRJ900/CRJ1000 is "just an RJ".

I never said any of the aircraft you mentioned above was "just an RJ." I have no idea what you're talking about.

The E190 that JetBlue flies is a 100 seat 737/DC-9 sized aircraft- not an "RJ" sized aircraft. Yet the payscale that your management assigned to your 100 seat aircraft resmembled 50 seat RJ pay. It was around 70 bucks an hour initially, was it not? So basically JetBlue, yet again, was massively undercutting the prevailing wages that existed at that time for no other reason than they could and there was nothing the JetBlue pilot group could do about it.

But OK, you argue that the E190 has a seating capacity slightly less than the average 737 and probably something resembling DC-9 seating capacity. So the E190 rates should have been something slightly less than whatever 737/DC9 guys were earning, but certainly not 70 bucks an hour!!! I find it amazing that you are rationalizing that JetBlue's current E190 rates were/are a fair rate considering the seating capacity of this aircraft compared to similarly sized aircraft at other major airlines.

Further more, the cancerous proliferation of jets larger than 50 seats was 100% the fault of legacy pilot groups and no one else,

OK true. Where did I state JetBlue was responsible for 50 seat RJ's?

You can't give your management the right to outsource the 170 (and bigger)

UAL management doesn't have the right to outsource anything bigger than the E170. And they're limited to 70 seats. And the sideletter that allowed the E170 in particular was a tactical error on our union leadership's part that may be reversible in '09.

 

[GuppyPuppy]

LET'S KEEP THIS TREAD ON TARGET,
let's not bring Alp into this.

www.jetbluepilots.org it is the JBPA web site, ( jetblue pilots association) register, the meeting is on jan 14, be there, do not be intimidated .

OK, I'll keep the TREAD on target.

Will we have immediate access to an aeromedical division immediately after voting in the union that is staffed by folks whose sole job is to help preserve our jobs?

Will we have immediate access to an experienced legal department whose sole job is to protect our jobs?

Will we have a big assessment to fund the union? I'm not crazy about coughing up a few thousand dollars all at once.

Even though ALPA may (or may not) be corrupt, I think it is the better way to go. Better than "Hey, we got a union. Now what?". While ALPA does have to sign off on any contract, it is the individual airlines' MEC and membership that will set the tone and specifics of the contract.

GP