airlinepilot
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2002
- Posts
- 481
This came off the SWAPA Pres. Blog. Interesting reading....maybe FAPA already had a handshake with RUH.
In order to satisfy Frontier management/counsel it became necessary to reach an Agreement in Principle (AIP) on a Seniority List Integration (SLI) before the auction was to begin on Thursday. With that news SWAPA began an earnest effort to get a deal done. Our M&A team was in Washington and we hurriedly got them back to DAL for bargaining Wednesday afternoon. The FAPA M&A team was set to fly to DAL as well arriving about the same time. We scheduled bargaining to begin at 1700 CDT.
After our M&A team was in the air headed to DAL FAPA informed SWAPA that their complete team would be unable to get to DAL due to members spread around the country and thus they would not be traveling to DAL. We immediately began setting up a video/audio forum for bargaining still set to begin at 1700 CDT. SWAPA was ready to go at 1700. Just prior to 1700 we were advised that FAPA would not be ready due to their President being unavailable due to his participation in meetings in NY as a member of the unsecured creditors committee. Rather than begin negotiations with the FAPA M&A team, FAPA chose to delay the beginning of bargaining until 1930 CDT until their President was available. We had a deadline of midnight EDT to reach an agreement. So we were down to 3 ½ hours of bargaining time to reach a deal. These type negotiations typically take weeks if not months to conclude. The two M&A teams exchanged several proposals and approaching midnight EDT we concluded our meeting without agreement and agreed to talk on Thursday morning to continue bargaining during the auction process. SWAPA reached out several times on Thursday to FAPA but we never heard back from their team to continue bargaining.
At the conclusion of bargaining we were in agreement on several issues but remained far apart on a combined seniority list. FAPA's position opening was for relative seniority with yet to be determined variable. In pure relative seniority integration you would see 1 Frontier pilot placed between every 10 Southwest pilots all the way down to the bottom of the new combined list. SWAPA's position Wednesday night when we broke was placing the Frontier pilots on the bottom of our list with several positives. The Frontier pilots would be trip pay protected at their CBA book rates plus any percentage increases negotiated in the SWAPA section 6 until the SWAPA rates were higher. This would have resulted in over a 40% increase in pay for most Frontier F/O's. Some would have been even higher. Additionally, we were willing to accept all Frontier pilots on the combined list including all furloughed pilots plus we would allocate 75% of the seats in the new SWA DEN domicile for 3 years following the fence agreement termination. Our proposal satisfied 3 out of 4 of the FAPA identified needs to reach an agreement. Their needs were job protection, pay protection, domicile protection and seat protection. In summary, the FAPA proposal would be a windfall for the FAPA pilots at the expense of the SWAPA pilots. Clearly, we were not willing to go anywhere near that position. Unfortunately we were never able to resume bargaining towards an agreement before the auction concluded. I'm have my doubts whether FAPA had any intention of ever reaching an agreement, especially when we had taken binding arbitration out of the mix with the contingency language.
In order to satisfy Frontier management/counsel it became necessary to reach an Agreement in Principle (AIP) on a Seniority List Integration (SLI) before the auction was to begin on Thursday. With that news SWAPA began an earnest effort to get a deal done. Our M&A team was in Washington and we hurriedly got them back to DAL for bargaining Wednesday afternoon. The FAPA M&A team was set to fly to DAL as well arriving about the same time. We scheduled bargaining to begin at 1700 CDT.
After our M&A team was in the air headed to DAL FAPA informed SWAPA that their complete team would be unable to get to DAL due to members spread around the country and thus they would not be traveling to DAL. We immediately began setting up a video/audio forum for bargaining still set to begin at 1700 CDT. SWAPA was ready to go at 1700. Just prior to 1700 we were advised that FAPA would not be ready due to their President being unavailable due to his participation in meetings in NY as a member of the unsecured creditors committee. Rather than begin negotiations with the FAPA M&A team, FAPA chose to delay the beginning of bargaining until 1930 CDT until their President was available. We had a deadline of midnight EDT to reach an agreement. So we were down to 3 ½ hours of bargaining time to reach a deal. These type negotiations typically take weeks if not months to conclude. The two M&A teams exchanged several proposals and approaching midnight EDT we concluded our meeting without agreement and agreed to talk on Thursday morning to continue bargaining during the auction process. SWAPA reached out several times on Thursday to FAPA but we never heard back from their team to continue bargaining.
At the conclusion of bargaining we were in agreement on several issues but remained far apart on a combined seniority list. FAPA's position opening was for relative seniority with yet to be determined variable. In pure relative seniority integration you would see 1 Frontier pilot placed between every 10 Southwest pilots all the way down to the bottom of the new combined list. SWAPA's position Wednesday night when we broke was placing the Frontier pilots on the bottom of our list with several positives. The Frontier pilots would be trip pay protected at their CBA book rates plus any percentage increases negotiated in the SWAPA section 6 until the SWAPA rates were higher. This would have resulted in over a 40% increase in pay for most Frontier F/O's. Some would have been even higher. Additionally, we were willing to accept all Frontier pilots on the combined list including all furloughed pilots plus we would allocate 75% of the seats in the new SWA DEN domicile for 3 years following the fence agreement termination. Our proposal satisfied 3 out of 4 of the FAPA identified needs to reach an agreement. Their needs were job protection, pay protection, domicile protection and seat protection. In summary, the FAPA proposal would be a windfall for the FAPA pilots at the expense of the SWAPA pilots. Clearly, we were not willing to go anywhere near that position. Unfortunately we were never able to resume bargaining towards an agreement before the auction concluded. I'm have my doubts whether FAPA had any intention of ever reaching an agreement, especially when we had taken binding arbitration out of the mix with the contingency language.
