A few TA comments from left field.
Economy, Economy....whoa is us...Right? We know the damn economy cycles, and guess what? The company was paying you slave wages all the while that the economy was booming. Screw the economy talk guys....When the economy was booming they weren't offering you more money, but instead pocketing what they SHOULD have been paying you. The money ain't right in the TA, period.
Rest - anyone see ANY MENTION AT ALL of a Circadian Rhythm rest clause in the TA??? Are they just going to drop that from the SOP as soon as the TA is ratified? That is one safety related work rule I would not be happy to see go. It should have been taken back to original hours in fact.
Per diem - you just got back what you always had before guys....seriously. They took that away from you and now it looks like a new perk coming back the way it is. How about raising the per diem somewhat to actually match what is allowed? It has been 40.80 for what? like 8 years? Come on, that is ridiculous!!!
Overall, the TA stinks in my book, but everyone gets one individual vote, so make your own choice. My guess is it will be voted down.
The Economy: Fact worst recession in 80 years. Guess what, you are going to have to come to grips with reality here. Your right, we should have been paid more in the past. We should be paid a lot more than the TA provides for. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that because they raped us before, they have the money now. Oh yea they were sticken it to us good, that’s why we voted in a union, but since then we had MS sell off 8 fleets of aircraft and nearly bankrupt the company, to line his and his little friend’s pockets, we’ve had a catastrophic rate of owner redemptions, for various reasons (including MS’s managerial incompetence) not just the economy and we’ve seen a dramatic drop in revenue hours flown throughout the Fractional industry. Look it up, it’s sickening. Our industry was hit disproportionately hard by the financial collapse. These are all facts, weather you want to hear them or not.
Our union has seen the company’s books and has told us that this was the very best deal they could get. You want to be mad about that fine, but trashing the TA and encouraging others to vote against it will not change our reality.
I think you should be looking at our situation another way. We could vote down the contract, send the negotiating committee back to the table and get nothing, no raise, no job protections, no work rules, nothing, or we could live to fight another day.
If this TA is ratified I think we should have every reason to believe that we will be back at the table in 2 ½ years. Remember the company has to tell the union 185 days prior to the three year contract amendable date if they plan to invoke their 4th year option. If they exercise this option, they will incur millions of dollars in costs associated with the fleet wide pay increase that option will generate. Either way we get paid.
Bottom line: If you believe the union is lying to you about the company’s economics, vote the contract down. Hell, why not tell everyone else on here to vote it down, as well. But remember, you essentially hired the union to represent you. You sent them in to gather confidential information about the company’s books. Something you, or any of us individually, could not do on our own. They went in with a PhD economist to look at the books and now they are telling us this is the best deal they could get. You better be personally ready to pick up the flag and charge back in there if this thing fails, because by trashing this TA in public you will have been partly responsible.