Comair Vote-- Summary-- Now What?

[enuffalready]

AS an ASA pilot, this is particularly important. Can one of you Comair guys please explain what you just agreed to?

pay, work rules, etc., thanks!!

 

[ILS2DH]

It basically sucks! 70 seat CA rate is SKW + 1%. 50 seat CA avg 8.9% paycut (5yr - 62.02). FO paycuts were the highest - 20.8% for the 70s and 13.6% for the 50s (5yr - 35.88) -- we no longer have seperate 50 and 70 seat FO rates. Per diem now $1.50/day.

QOL wasn't affected much, and for reserves may be a little better with a new long call reserve system and changes to moveable days off. However, the no furloughed clause was eliminated (not that it did much anway). They are suppose to implement a profit sharing plan Jan 07, but it's may payout would be 8% in 09 and beyond.

The rest was GARBAGE about future aircraft deliveries in 07 on aircraft uncommited to ASA/SKW "provided CMR is able to attain financing". There are many outs the company has, so I doubt we'll see any new airframes from this. At best, we may stop losing airframes after the 30 are gone that are already set it motion.

Hope this helps. I'm sure the whole thing is posted here somewhere.

 

["GO AROUND"]

They just agreed to join the race to the bottom or reduced pay to play.

 

[uncle]

Losing company 401k matching and 11 days min off(was 12 for 31 day month).

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

No 401k match? So, if there is no pension and we all know how safe those are in the airline industry, then the pilots voted away a retirement plan??!! I wonder if everyone here realizes that in almost any other industry the employees would leave in droves if something like this happened. For the employees sake I'd hope it's all just temporary.

Mr. I.

 

[bvt1151]

The agreement included that the company would pay out last years retirement plan, which they weren't going to do. Very possibly, Comair got one more year of retirement than if they voted it down.

Its those little things they won't tell you...

 

[cl65capt]

Something I havent seen mentioned but doesnt this LOA get rid of the no furlough clause?

 

[fugghedabowdit]

Wrong on the 401k match, its still there. Goes up to 70% of first five % after 10 years. What is gone is the retirement contribution done at year end, based on annual w2 and years of service. Replaced by profit sharing plan which may be good if/when we are ever sold.

The no furlough is gone, as it applied to those who were here during the '01 strike.

 

[surplus1]

Yes, it gets rid of the no furlough clause. However, that only applied to the senior 1/2 of the pilot group anyway. Rather meaningless. If we furlough 900 pilots this airline is history. If the airline shuts down in BK no furlough is worthless.

We gave up all of our "B" plan retirement (it was 2 - 10%), which has the effect of being an additional 10% pay cut for senior captains.
Plus most of the regular 401k match (was 2.5%) is also gone. We also lost 25% of our dead-head pay and 25 c per hr from our per diem rate.

Also don't foget that in the spring of 2005 we accepted a longevity "freeze" and on top of that gave up a 4.5% scheduled raise. That had already cost us 8% or more.

For a little airline like ours this is no small concession. In terms of pay and benefits or contract has taken a huge hit. However, we did retain our work rules, which are always a lot harder to get back than pay rates. This is a 4-year contract with a 2% bump in pay rates after 36 months. If the next round of negotiations lasts for 3 years as is par for the course, we're stuck with this for the next 7 years. The closeness of the vote should tell you that we've hit rock bottom.

It's nothing to be proud of but that's what happens in bankruptcy when there's a loaded gun pointed at your head. You can either take the bullet or take the concessions. We're just copying all the majors and taking the concessions. It's anybody's guess what the outcome will be.