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More Furloughs at CAL/CALEX

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Airline of the Year for 2001??

This is the latest email sent to me concerning CAL...

Furlough Numbers to Increase

Proving once again that the public message and the facts don’t match,
management informed your Negotiating Committee Tuesday morning of further
furloughs within the pilot group, in an effort to reduce the Flight
Operations budget by approximately $10 million for 2002.

Management indicated that they would announce a new system bid later this
week, with plans to furlough an additional 100 Continental pilots –
approximately 50 March 1 and the balance April 1. Continental Express
management has indicated their furlough numbers would be in excess of
Continental’s. These new furloughs come on top of the 826 previously
furloughed Continental and Continental Express pilots.

“While the Company is trumpeting supposed successes on Wall Street, the
realities of ‘working together’ are being borne once again
disproportionately by the pilots of Continental and Continental Express,”
stated CAL ALPA MEC Vice Chairman John Prater, “This comes at a time when
the Company is reporting record load factors, improved revenues, and
recalling flight attendants, gate agents and ramp workers.”

Since the events of September, your Negotiating Committee has presented
various detailed cost saving proposals, from early retirements, COLAs,
reductions in line values and other staffing changes that, by management’s
own estimates, could have saved over $25 million, only to have each of these
proposals rejected.

In contrast, management at Delta, Northwest and United have all “worked
together” with their ALPA representatives to mitigate the number of
furloughs. Various industry standard contractual provisions at these
carriers reduce the number of junior manning events, reduce the ability to
flex pay caps and line divisors prior to the furlough of pilots and make
non-flying lines of time with reduced (55 hours) pay values a viable
alternative to furloughs. The impacts of these contractual provisions are
significant to providing job security. For example, Delta, with twice the
number of pilots, has furloughed approximately the same number of pilots as
Continental. Northwest, which has approximately the same level of pilot
staffing as Continental, has furloughed less than half the number of pilots.
Both of these carriers have reduced their flight schedules by the same
percentage as Continental.

Continental management is aware of these proactive solutions, but believe
they know how to run a better airline. In fact, they have worked
unilaterally over the past 6 to 8 weeks on micro-managing the staffing
levels based on the flexible provisions of Contract ’97, but have only been
willing to discuss the details of their final staffing plan just before the
bid is supposed to be issued.

Adding to the sense of finality, neither the Senior VP of Operations,
Captain Debbie McCoy, nor Senior VP of Human Resources and Labor Relations,
Mike Campbell, attended the Monday meeting. Only vague suggestions to meet
after the bid is issued were offered by the members of management present.

Management is clearly counting on the pilot groups’ distress over their
reduction in pay status to result in a willingness to accept higher line
divisors during summer months, increased junior manning levels, increased
utilization of reserves, and to tout this forthcoming bid as an “increase”
in flying. In fact, the forthcoming bid represents approximately 20% less
staffing than the 02-07 bid. Management’s ability to successfully operate a
record holiday schedule, given our lack of contractual provisions to
mitigate furloughs, makes the decision to resume the furlough of pilots all
the more attractive from an accounting standpoint. The decisions of
management would appear to be a return to the “bean counter” mentality of
the 1990s.
Management’s consolation to the next group of furloughed pilots is, “They
will be out the shortest time period.” Management indicated no recalls would
occur before 2003 at the earliest, and there was no guarantee that these
furloughs would be the last, as two of the “queens of the skies – the
B-777s” are being removed from the schedule and parked for the remainder of
2002.

More information will be provided when the final bid numbers become
available. Based on the initial estimates, the senior furloughed pilot will
be from the August 1998 Continental class. That individual may be able to
hold RJ Captain until the subsequent CALEX reduction bid, which may reflect
the removal of the remaining turboprop aircraft from the CALEX system.
-- END --
 
Prop Trash

U.S. Airways has 880 pilots on the street. Buy the time they are done there will be 1350. If things go as planned.

Regards

Smoking Man
 
Eagle has furloughed 304 so far with staffing around 2700 before 9/11...
 
furloughs

Earlier it was asked which airline had furloughed more than 25% of its pilots. The answer...Midwest Express.... sort of...rough numbers. Initially managment announced 135-140 furloughs which was about 35%. That was reduced to 102 about a month later (around 27%-again rough estimates). I think the last group of 15 were furloughed on Dec. 1. Now word is that 33 will be recalled by April 15. Obviously management overreacted (or they still don't know what they're doing), hopefully CAL's, UAL's, AA's, DAL's, and everyone else's managements did too.

I've found work in the airport and the flights are definately leaving full. Its common to see 10-20 people getting bumped... Is this saving money? Hotels, meals, compensation money (I got bumped and got a free future round trip and $150 from UAL), pissed off passengers. Hopefully we'll all by flying again soon.
 
Perhaps I am missing something. We all know that for the most part management sucks. But putting aside the fact that usually what is good for management is bad for the pilot group whats wrong with them trying to manage their cost. A pilot has to be the most expensive human factor of a flight. It seems to be pretty simple , if they dont have enuff pilots or pilots willing to work overtime to fly the flights it will cost them more than to have a few extra pilots on standby. So why are they bastages ( worse than normal?).
Jim
P.S. This was not meant as flame bait! All I was wondering was how could a company could screw its pilot group with excess layoffs and fly the routes it wants to?
 
James007.

You aren't missing anything, but unfortunately this game is about power and not common sense. You probably have seen me on these boards grumpily arguing that furloughed major pilots should be given fair interviews at the regionals. Many regional pilots have rebutted me, with financial and logical reasons why this shouldn't be done. Their reasoning is solid, but I don't believe that is the real reason behind management's ignorance of us. This game is about power and positioning, and that's what's happening to us, and is the ultimate answer to your question. For example, ACA says that they are hiring in March. Let's say HYPOTHETICALLY, that they and the other regionals start calling people like me for interviews between now and mid February, and they hire a bunch of us without resigning our numbers. If that happened, most people at my airline would say, hey everything's OK, the furloughees have "interim" jobs and they'll be back someday. The union then agrees to pay concessions, and ludicrous scope ammendments. Seem farfetched, ask anybody who is junior at UAL or any other carrier if it couldn't happen. The pressure is high on people like me right now, if it's released around the time concession negotiations occur, it will weaken UAL ALPA's position and following. Carriers like ACA/Air Wis/Skywest all have their training costs covered by UAL, what do they care about hiring furloughees? The situation is the same at DAL. Comair wants 500 new hires, what happens to the scope sentiment if Comair et al. all of sudden start hiring DAL furloughees. This jig is all a power game on both sides of the ball: management and union. The sooner you pick up the game, the sooner you can be a good player.
 
I just wish I was furloughed. At Chautauqua, they fired 125 pilots (25%). Time will tell if our union can get that changed, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
Mallard, did I read you correctly that they fired 25%? I guess that means no recall rights when they need more pilots. Do you know why they did that? Thats a real bummer!

Good Luck.
 
Parking two 777's!!! Combined that has to be approx 3.6 million per month in interest/lease payments being pissed away. Oh my...
 

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