A-V-8
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2006
- Posts
- 355
I posted this on the now shut down Mesahub.
The date of the last modification is 11/23/2008. This was my take on the contract. Let me say again I wrote this before voting ended. I am not a visionary I just have thoughts.
I was wrong about at least one thing. The reserves keep 11 days off. Also the holdback grievance has been settled. I received just over $1,000. Thanks ALPA.
Ok folks here we are again. The freedom of speech via the internet and I am going to exercise my right to ramble on and on about nothing other than the contract. I thought about not posting this because the consensus here is to Vote no. I probably won’t convince anyone here to vote no because almost everyone here is already voting no. But I decided to finish this up in the jump seat ride home today. First of all let me thank all of the Union reps and negotiators for their efforts. At times being a rep is a thankless job. Like over the last eight years or so. It has been less time than that since I made the decision to become a pilot in the first place. I think this contract represents a valid effort by our negotiators to make our working conditions more favorable and fair for us here at Mesa Airlines. Kudos to all of you and I can’t thank you all enough from the bottom of my heart. I really don’t understand why you guys do it sometimes but I for one appreciate that you do. I know that there are a lot of others that are often too silent in our appreciation for all of you and the countless hours that you spend working for all of us for free on your days off. Crap wages from the company on your days on and no wages on your days off working for us.
Moving on to this contract. The membership told the MEC loud and clear that the number one priority for the new contract was improving our schedules and the efficiency that we are used. Given that as the number one priority I personally think that this Tentative agreement is a disaster. There is nothing in this contract that will force that objective onto the company. Of course this is my opinion so let me explain it. PBS is not a way to write more efficient schedules. It is a more efficient way to award schedules. If you don’t improve the amount of flying in the pairings then PBS will just be awarding crappy schedules. I for one made a call to listen to the negotiating committee and the Contract Administrator discusses the contract. I don’t know if the call is online or even if it will ever be online but I asked a very important question. It was related to PBS and exactly what “With significant ALPA input” meant. The answer: ALPA input means nothing. You can line the bird cage because ALPA will not get to input any of the parameters that will govern how our schedules and pairings will be built. The company will input all of them with suggestions from ALPA. We can suggest that the company do certain things right now. Hold your breath. So the union never really answered my question about rules, input, and long term (after February 2010) rules. We can only make suggestions for PBS and not demands. So we can pull out of PBS right? Well let’s take a look. You give a reserve pilot 11 days off. You give out block or better. You give a line guarantee. Now how are you going to tell the pilot group that we have to give up that stuff because the company won’t play fair with the parameters in the PBS? Gonna be a tough sell. Especially in January 2010. If we turn on PBS and like it and the company puts very favorable language into PBS initially and everyone likes it consider this. We try to get a LOA governing PBS parameters and ALPA input but the company won’t budge. You try to pull out of PBS but the membership says we like PBS. You say but it will suck in February without this LOA just trust us we need to pull out. Good luck with that. You will never get out. Furthermore this until February will simply become permanent leverage for the company. J.O. pulls the plug on PBS and line guarantee goes away along with block or better and reserves will lose 28 days off per year. The company doesn’t have to pull out of PBS for a reason related to PBS. They can pull out for other reasons like saving money. Take this as an example. An arbitrator awards us a huge settlement for the Harris award. The company says the only way that we can pay this is to pull out of PBS. OR we could just settle it for half. O.K. buddy its show time. What are you going to do? Settle? J.O. can do that over and over again until January of 2010. The union also said that in the conference call that we have more oversight than Southwest and Delta. Oversight is completely different from control. Also Delta and Southwest have trip rigs and duty rigs. Additionally when Herb Keller left Southwest the pilots paid $100,000 to take out a full page ad in USA Today thanking him for his service to the company. Does anyone here want to make a motion for that treatment for J.O. when he leaves Mesa? Use our union dollars to thank him for what he has done for us and the stock holders. If you do intend to do that with my 2% please let me know now so I can start the recall. My point is that those companies are run by people who want to treat their employees well. They regard their people as assets and not expenses. J.O. sat next to me in the new hire luncheon and said “My responsibility is to the stock holders not the employees. If I were the CEO of US Airways I would go the pilots and say here it is guys. Take it or leave it. If you leave it I will liquidate the company.” That is the way he thinks. He is threatening and not shy about it. It would be different for him to say that in privacy to the board members and be cordial in a new hire luncheon to the new employees but not J.O. He is cold and callus to our faces from the start. Please stop saying anything about Southwest and Delta unless it is in enforceable writing in the TA.
The date of the last modification is 11/23/2008. This was my take on the contract. Let me say again I wrote this before voting ended. I am not a visionary I just have thoughts.
I was wrong about at least one thing. The reserves keep 11 days off. Also the holdback grievance has been settled. I received just over $1,000. Thanks ALPA.
Ok folks here we are again. The freedom of speech via the internet and I am going to exercise my right to ramble on and on about nothing other than the contract. I thought about not posting this because the consensus here is to Vote no. I probably won’t convince anyone here to vote no because almost everyone here is already voting no. But I decided to finish this up in the jump seat ride home today. First of all let me thank all of the Union reps and negotiators for their efforts. At times being a rep is a thankless job. Like over the last eight years or so. It has been less time than that since I made the decision to become a pilot in the first place. I think this contract represents a valid effort by our negotiators to make our working conditions more favorable and fair for us here at Mesa Airlines. Kudos to all of you and I can’t thank you all enough from the bottom of my heart. I really don’t understand why you guys do it sometimes but I for one appreciate that you do. I know that there are a lot of others that are often too silent in our appreciation for all of you and the countless hours that you spend working for all of us for free on your days off. Crap wages from the company on your days on and no wages on your days off working for us.
Moving on to this contract. The membership told the MEC loud and clear that the number one priority for the new contract was improving our schedules and the efficiency that we are used. Given that as the number one priority I personally think that this Tentative agreement is a disaster. There is nothing in this contract that will force that objective onto the company. Of course this is my opinion so let me explain it. PBS is not a way to write more efficient schedules. It is a more efficient way to award schedules. If you don’t improve the amount of flying in the pairings then PBS will just be awarding crappy schedules. I for one made a call to listen to the negotiating committee and the Contract Administrator discusses the contract. I don’t know if the call is online or even if it will ever be online but I asked a very important question. It was related to PBS and exactly what “With significant ALPA input” meant. The answer: ALPA input means nothing. You can line the bird cage because ALPA will not get to input any of the parameters that will govern how our schedules and pairings will be built. The company will input all of them with suggestions from ALPA. We can suggest that the company do certain things right now. Hold your breath. So the union never really answered my question about rules, input, and long term (after February 2010) rules. We can only make suggestions for PBS and not demands. So we can pull out of PBS right? Well let’s take a look. You give a reserve pilot 11 days off. You give out block or better. You give a line guarantee. Now how are you going to tell the pilot group that we have to give up that stuff because the company won’t play fair with the parameters in the PBS? Gonna be a tough sell. Especially in January 2010. If we turn on PBS and like it and the company puts very favorable language into PBS initially and everyone likes it consider this. We try to get a LOA governing PBS parameters and ALPA input but the company won’t budge. You try to pull out of PBS but the membership says we like PBS. You say but it will suck in February without this LOA just trust us we need to pull out. Good luck with that. You will never get out. Furthermore this until February will simply become permanent leverage for the company. J.O. pulls the plug on PBS and line guarantee goes away along with block or better and reserves will lose 28 days off per year. The company doesn’t have to pull out of PBS for a reason related to PBS. They can pull out for other reasons like saving money. Take this as an example. An arbitrator awards us a huge settlement for the Harris award. The company says the only way that we can pay this is to pull out of PBS. OR we could just settle it for half. O.K. buddy its show time. What are you going to do? Settle? J.O. can do that over and over again until January of 2010. The union also said that in the conference call that we have more oversight than Southwest and Delta. Oversight is completely different from control. Also Delta and Southwest have trip rigs and duty rigs. Additionally when Herb Keller left Southwest the pilots paid $100,000 to take out a full page ad in USA Today thanking him for his service to the company. Does anyone here want to make a motion for that treatment for J.O. when he leaves Mesa? Use our union dollars to thank him for what he has done for us and the stock holders. If you do intend to do that with my 2% please let me know now so I can start the recall. My point is that those companies are run by people who want to treat their employees well. They regard their people as assets and not expenses. J.O. sat next to me in the new hire luncheon and said “My responsibility is to the stock holders not the employees. If I were the CEO of US Airways I would go the pilots and say here it is guys. Take it or leave it. If you leave it I will liquidate the company.” That is the way he thinks. He is threatening and not shy about it. It would be different for him to say that in privacy to the board members and be cordial in a new hire luncheon to the new employees but not J.O. He is cold and callus to our faces from the start. Please stop saying anything about Southwest and Delta unless it is in enforceable writing in the TA.
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