Grinstein's last word on ASA-Comair merger

[wms]

I don't know about CA, but the ASA contract provides furlough protection in the event of a buyout or merger.

 

[surplus1]

I like my British firing line analogy, now that I think about it more. Our tactics are antiquated for the new era of contract carriers and whipsaw techniques by managment. We're being attacked by Delta but we're only allowed to fight back against Comair. If Delta won't allow us to negotiate directly with them, its time to think of ways to force them to. I'm sure there are ways of putting pressure on Randy to accomplish some own deals with Delta in our favor. Its a two-tier type of negotiations and it'll take some higher thought as to ways of implementing it. We're being fired at long-range by Delta, yet we can only reach Comair to retaliate. There is a way to negotiate through Comair. We just have to figure out how. That's up to the offials elected to make those decisions.

There's merit in that and lots of it. You do seem to be missing two very important points however: 1) We aren't a contract carrier, we're a subsidiary, and 2) It is not Delta that won't allow us to negotiate directly with them. Delta has said, in writing, that they will negotiate with whomever ALPA sends to the table. It is the President of ALPA, again in writing, who refused to allow us to negotiate directly with Delta. The exchanged letters are not secret, they are readily available for your review.

I doubt seriously that the ALPA President feels bad about it and will change his mind, especially if the DMEC tells him not to do so. Like everyone else he marches to a drum and Comair pilots don't own the drumsticks. ALPA is already facing severe reductions in its cash flow resulting from the AAA bankruptcy, the UAL bankruptcy and other concessionary hits. Concessions to come at Delta will not improve that. Defiance of the DMEC by the ALPA President could result in the eventual departure of Delta a la APA. That would force ALPA to move from the Hyatt Regency to bookings with Motel 6. If all that has to be sacrificed is CMR and ASA, don't hold your breath waiting for a decision in our favor.

Perhaps you believe the DMEC would not do that. I believe that both ALPA and the DMEC will not allow us to get near Delta management until the Delta pilots have already closed their deal. What the DMEC may want (with respect to us) in that "deal" is not know to us but you can bet as much as you chose, they have already decided. All they have left to do is convince the Company. They have something the Company wants,i.e. 1 billion dollars. That's a tidy sum. "Conferences" between our MECs will result in our being told whatever they choose to tell us. We can believe it or not as we see fit but you can bet again they will tell us what they want us to hear and no more. When they ink the deal, you may wake up to find that all the CR7s are now siting at Delta and flown by Delta pilots that our instructors will train until their own are qualified. We will then be facing the potential furlough of 200 and a lot of lost compensation before we get our turn in the barrel. At that point they'll just tell us "that's the way it is" and ALPA will be serving champagne to the chosen few in its Herndon celebration. That's how our "union" works; "fair and balanced" like FOX News.

It was no accident that we did not get a release fron the NMB until after the Delta pilots had signed on the last go around. ALPA will of course deny any complicity and it will be "plausible" as all political denials are, but whose "influence" do you think made certain that would not happen? (No, it wasn't the DMEC and it wasn't the Company). Oh sorry, there was no "influence", I just suffer from the paranoia of frustration and the pain of reality; a bitter lifer that couldn't make it to the majors.

Last time we had a major negotiation it was with Delta, through Comair. That led to a major strike; counterproductive for both.

Randy has a lot to say about our day-to-day operations. Other than that, he really has nothing to say about the "big picture" at Delta. That's above his pay grade. They may listen out of courtesy, but his recommendations are not about to establish Delta's labor relations policies. If your were here during the strike you may recall that when things got nasty it wasn't Randy of even Siebenburgen that appeared to "meet the press". It was Fred Reid, President of Delta. When bargaining, a middle man serves no purpose other than to increase the cost of the deal. Since we will be doing the "paying" whenever this begins it can't hurt to lower the costs by going directly to the person with the decision making power. It is virtually impossible to close a deal when the person with the power to do so is not at the table. There are lots of new faces at Delta in places that affect us both directly and indirectly. Maybe they are different but that is left to be seen.

I'm not second guessing our MEC (yet), but since we aren't going to be permitted to do anything until after Delta closes with its pilots, we might as well cool our heels and not make any overtures that we have not been asked to make. We are not in Section 6 and that is still many months away. If anything has to be done right now, which it doesn't, an extension of the current CBA might be one of many options included in our "out of the box" thinking.

If we open our contract at the wrong time, we might well lose more than our shirts. It's pretty certain that if 7500 pilots are not in a position to force the Company into anything, and they aren't, the probability that 1800 pilots could is virtually nil. Don't forget where the APA put its tail when faced with the real prospect of bankruptcy. "This tail (CMR) ain't gonna wag that doq (Delta) anytime soon." -- To quote our former CEO from the pre-slavery era.

As you may have noticed I'm an idealist, but even the most overt idealist needs a healthy dose of pragmatism every now and then to make it through life. Keep in mind survival is an instinct; necessity the mother of invention.

 

[AFELLOWAVIATOR]

Flash7,


The large exodus has helped tremendously---but according to the Council 66 Chairman---the recalls were crafted to adhere to the recall schedule thanks to the early retirements, current pilot shortage, and FUTURE expansion created by a more profitable Delta after concessions. That recall rate is between 30 and 45 a month thru 2006. I don't think all 1020 would come back now from the current set of retirements--but more retirements due to large pay cuts would bring back even more. The deal was to try to get them all back by AUG of 2006. Dalpa didn't try to ram this down Delta's throat---they tried to make it feasible--by spreading it out. Obviously a new aircraft order (like new EMB-190s etc...) could bring them back faster, but a large increase in the cap would delay their return. If that is the case---look for Dalpa to try to negotiate something to bring them back in some other way--maybe a J4J type deal etc....I don't really know, but I would expect them to get our furloughs back into A COCKPIT as soon as they could.


Surplus1,

You are believing that a "staple" would result in huge DCI furloughs---and I would think there would be a fence made. I doubt any current DCI pilots would be affected---other than stagnation---which is better than a 100% pay cut via a furlough. I do not know if any of this would happen---since I am not at the negotiating table......But Dalpa has GOT TO BE looking at saving jobs some how.....

Bye Bye--General Lee

Have you given any thought to the possibility of more furloughs because of the increase in productivity which would result from relaxed work rules?

 

[General Lee]

Afellowaviator,


Yes, we have looked at that. So far, the Dalpa leadership have stated that they will not allow that. We shall see.

Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[N813CA]

Just remember, I was at Piedmont. We took a big pay cut, and now a lot of my friends have had a HUGE pay cut for 2 years and they are still going to be shut down. WAS THAT WORTH IT? The airplanes are going to go were they need to be. When Comair made more than JET BLUE, SOUTHWEST, AND AIRTRAN in one quarter last year combined. Delta isn't going to get rid of that.

 

[P38JLightning]

job protections

>>>>While the disparity between the two airlines is so great as to likely result in a staple or near staple, the only way a massive "flush" could be avoided is to stipulate that you can't displace. If you want to change where you fly (as in regional vs mainline aircraft), you bid for it. If no Delta pilot bids a Delta vacancy a Comair pilot can fill it. If no Comair pilot bids a CMR vacancy a Delta pilot can bid it. That way there is "no windfall" for either side and we don't become furlough fodder for Delta pilots.

Amen, Surplus.

But good luck getting the RJDC and most of its supporters to go along with that. I agree with you that you can't simply go by "something you heard someone say in the crew room", etc, but Furloughed Again and I aren't the only ones who notice a very vocal and consistent message from obvious RJDC supporters, both in the crew room and in the cockpit. It is a consistent, unified message:

NOTHING short of something greater than a staple is going to be acceptable. DOH is the preferred, and is sincerely thought to be deserved by many, but whatever happens MUST include something greater than a staple. Something that is never going to happen, nor should ever happen. We DO deserve, and should fight for, DOH for furlough protection and/or the no displacement fence as you've described, but this is not enough for most (though not all) RJDC supporters.

But just like the Deltoids freaked out about the PID because they might have lost some seniority and 71+ seat bidding opportunities, our side of the fence equally freaked out (as they do to this day) about not having at least the chance to get greater than a staple. The RJDC puts out pages and pages of "updates" both online and in print in the Comair/ASA crew rooms. How hard would it be for them to suggest a realistic proposal as you've described? They constantly trash ALPA and its specific policies, yet have never proposed a specific solution. It would be really hard to get a windfall of any kind if it precluded them from ever getting something greater than a staple by admitting up front it was out of the picture. Rest assured, the RJDC and its supporters will gladly burn the house down on this one issue alone. Either they will have an arbitrator decide if they get DOH or Staple+ seniority for the purpose of bidding 71+ seat equipment or there will be no deal. You can count on that.

>>>>>Its not too different with the highly touted ASA/CMR merger. The mere act of merging may save money for the Company but it does nothing for either ASA or CMR pilots, except guarantee that almost everyone will lose some seniority. It certainly, alone, does nothing to prevent whipsaw with all the other DCI carriers or the mainline. So where is the big benefit for the pilots? Who benefits most = the most senior types, but what's better about being #3600 on a 3600 pilot list as opposed to #1800 on and 1800 pilot list? Look at the math. A 10% RIF furloughs 360 as opposed to 180. Where will YOU (anybody) fall in that equation? Frankly, if this merger comes without something else that benefits the pilots, I don't see it as an advantage.

You're too smart for "fuzzy math" like that surplus. There is no way Delta (or DCI) is going to say "OK, we need to furlough 10% of SOMEONE, but it doesn't matter who or how much, as long as its 10%." If they furlough 10% of a combined ASA/Comair (about 400 pilots), than they would either furlough 200 of each if we're seperate, or 400 of one or the other. I absolutely object to the notion that Comair pilots are in any way better off by staying seperate from ASA.

There is currently a full court press propaganda drive going on trying to convince junior (especially pre-upgrade) Comair pilots about how they will be screwed by a merger with ASA because they will "lose seniority". What good is being number 1800, 1500 or 100 on our list with more and more whipsawing going on and everyone underbidding one another for growth (and soon for status quo) with none of us having any real job protections and us being (every day by an increasing margin) the highest paid and most stubborn (in the eyes of managament) of the entire portfolio?

Our MEC's have made combined seniority lists in the past and the movement on the list between the pilot groups was 1-2% either way for 99% of the pilots on both lists. Sure Comair has hired more recently, but ASA will hire more than us for the next few years. Of course Comair is hiring plenty right now, replacing the droves of junior FO's that are leaving for SWA, JBLU, etc. We couldn't take the risk of matching ASA's meaningless 6 furloughed Delta pilots because of the whopping training bill that would represent 5 or more years down the road when they got recalled, but losing 5-10 junior FO's a month (11 last month alone) is no big deal. Interesting.

Now we have given DALPA a case hard wedge to drive between the Comair and ASA pilot groups in the future. When Delta does start hiring again (and they will) the ASA pilots will suddenly be glad they are "seperate" from Comair. Duane and his anti-regional conspirators in Herndon couldn't have crafted a better anti-Comair scheme if they tried than pitting us against our closest (and arguably only) industry ally in the future.

At least we prevented those 6 "double voting rights" people who would have swung our elections. Nevermind that we have at least that many Delta interns, with guaranteed Delta interviews, who were already (for all intents and purposes) hired at Delta before they got their first hour. Who'se issues do you think they care about, Comair's or Delta's? And the 50-100 junior FO's a year we are losing who came to Comair not even to build time (which at least takes a few years), but to simply get current or to get a temp gig while their number in someone else's pool gets called. That's no big deal either, as long as they aren't PFE's we'll let it go, because we have more important things to concentrate on, like staple+ at Delta, or bringing down the walls of scope and bidding on 71+ seat equipment so we can get a raise. Right, a raise. They won't possibly go to Chautauqua or SkyWest, cause we are Delta's golden goose, right?

What's even more interesting is ALPA and the RJDC's shared opinion that we shouldn't even get around to fixing these issues for years and years. ALPA is pimping its "brand scope" solution, which in principle is easy to agree with. But according to them will take multipile bargaining sessions at each carrier to gradually phase in. Hmmmm. Each "session" takes about a decade, so....
And the RJDC wants us to believe joining with ASA is fruitless because it doesn't solve all our problems. So its better to sit on the sideline, rely completely on its litigation to solve everything (which, even IF sucessful will take at least a decade or two, including appeals, etc).

Look, I realize the enormus challenges we face if we are ever going to get to where we want to be. But we have to get started now, and we have to be prepared to negotiate and sacrifice to get it. If we don't, we'll have plenty of sacfirices forced upon us. You make a good point about mainline (d.b.a. "Midatlantic") and Jet Blue driving the cost of our labor down more than the PFG and PFU (pay for growth and pay for upgrade) regionals, but that's only because they were the most recent. Give SkyWest and Chautauqua the next turn in the barell and see how fast they underbid them. They will do anything for growth and rapid upgrades. And that will be a direct threat to us with management's ability to "award growth" and "realign" flying and assets to whomever they please.

IMO we will need the Delta pilot's help, as they control the scope right now. Fight it in court all you want, but explain how any court judgement is going to have any teeth whatsoever 10 years from now, when there are 15 DCI portfolio carriers, SkyWest and Chautauqua have two thirds of the newly unlimited 70 and 90 seaters and Comair's labor costs are double or tripple anyone else's costs on equipment twice the size.

Of course we don't want to work with the Delta pilots any more than they want to work with us. They are still harping on our attempted "seniority grab" and we're still livid ALPA didn't let an arbitrator possibly grant us access to their seniority list. One thing is for sure; the way things are going we'll get to enjoy the status quo for a while. What happens then will just have to be someone else's problem.