New Bid for USAIR EAST Pilots?

[reepicheep]

Honestly, I don't think this is an America West thing. If Airways had merged with Airtran, or Southwest, or Alaska; any airline with a remotely normal seniority/longevity/career progression history, you'd have the same result. The infamous "20 year guy slotted in with a 4 year wonder". The 16-17 year Airways folks didn't get their time recognized because they had no job.

 

[SOVT]

The post was in response to a west guy calling for USAPA to move away from DOH. My question, if it's appropriate for the east to move away from DOH isn't it also appropriate for the west to move away from the award.

This industry is under more pressure than I have ever seen in my thirty odd years of flying. If the west guys persist in being belligerent towards their legally constituted bargaining agent they are setting up the entire airline to fail. I have friends on both sides of the fence and would hate to see that happen.

Why should the west rewrite the list. The west followed the rules and gained NOTHING but a relative seniority judgement. If 16 years gets you bottom reserve FO what makes you think that you should be captain on the next bid at the expense of another pilot group? Their was plenty of time for negotiations, fences....2 years ago. NEITHER side could reach an agreement. They both chose to go to arbitration KNOWING what the outcome could be. One side is following their agreements ans the other is making up rules as they go along.

STOV please tell my why the west should give in now? Honestly I would like to know. No flame either, I am wondering why you feel that way.

 

[Colonel Savage]

I don't think this SLI issue can affect the survival of LCC one way or the other. You could say they might be missing out on some of those famous "synergies" that managements like to bally-hoo about when trying to sell one of their "deals", but in the end the airline in question winds being as inefficiently run as it was before.

And lets face it, how can you blend the seniority lists now, with all the acrimony? Can anyone really see these two groups flying monthly trips together or even a 4 day trip out of the same bases after all this?

I say best thing is to just keep 'em apart, run 'em separate, and go from there. Furlough or hire the pilots as you need them to staff the respective bases. Separate contracts? Dunno. Who cares? Doesn't amount to a relative hill of beans to the company anyway. A westie gets furloughed because his side gets cut more? Well, looks like he's on the "side" that needs more rationalization. Part of the biz. Have to commute because you can't get into the other side's base? Then you just keep doing what you've always been doing. Besides, do you really want to fly outta there anyway with all those easties or westies or USwhatevers or AWhatevers?

Looks to me like that train's left the station.

 

[m80drvr]

The post was in response to a west guy calling for USAPA to move away from DOH. My question, if it's appropriate for the east to move away from DOH isn't it also appropriate for the west to move away from the award.

This industry is under more pressure than I have ever seen in my thirty odd years of flying. If the west guys persist in being belligerent towards their legally constituted bargaining agent they are setting up the entire airline to fail. I have friends on both sides of the fence and would hate to see that happen.

SOVT

You still didn't answer why the west should renegotiate an arbitration. DOH was not the award but you suggest that the west should start negotiations from that point. Why, just tomove things along? What would you do if your career wasbeing destroyed by a group that will not honor the agreements that they make. Why should they be rewarded for NOT following the agreements they signed?

What would you do if you payed your mortgage every month but the bank decided to kick yoou out and foreclose on you house. Their only reason being that they now don't like the interest rate that you negotiated and agreed on. What would you do? Would you just agree to renegotiate your mortgage starting from the banks "new" rate? I think not.

 

[Fly-n-hi]

Why haven't the west pilots said something like... we know you east guys aren't happy with the award so why don't we develop a methodology by which the guys who spent sixteen or seventeen years on the property will have that time recognized for bidding and upgrading?

All I've heard on this forum is , to heck with you, enjoy being junior to Dave.

Why? Because our MEC's agreed to binding arbitration. They agreed to accept an arbitrator's decision regardless of whether or not you agreed with the decision. Thats what binding arbitration is.

The West pilots did not agree to USAPA. It was forced on us.

Now, USAPA needs our money to operate. Do you want our money or not? Do you want us to be unified or not? If you do then you need to start acting like a union that represents all of its pilots...equally. Untill then we will oppose you.

The ball is in USAPA's court. What are you going to do with it?

You talk about fences and restricting the (not so desirable) A-330 flying on these boards. I haven't heard anything that suggests that USAPA has put that out even as a posibilty. As far as I know they have the same DOH only mentality they had when they were ALPA...the same mentality that got us into arbitration in the first place. Don't complain to us but rather complain to USAPA. They are calling the shots now.

At this moment the only thing keeping us from moving forward is your futile insistence on DOH.

You all make it sound like the Nic Award was some kind of victory for the West pilots. Nope. A victory for us would have been stapling you all to the bottom of our list, which BTW, we didn't even persue that option.



Earlier I said I would pay my dues and I will. But I will hold out as long as I can. I'm not gonna risk my job over $250 a month.

 

[Guppiedriver]

Those words just might come back to haunt you.

OK Einstein, explain to me how.

 

[get2flyin]

The post was in response to a west guy calling for USAPA to move away from DOH. My question, if it's appropriate for the east to move away from DOH isn't it also appropriate for the west to move away from the award.

Tell you what, if the East moves away from DOH, the West will move away from stapling the entire East of the bottom of the seniority list.

The Nic ruling was sort of a mid-point. Why should the West now start working from the mid-point to a NEW middle ground?

This industry is under more pressure than I have ever seen in my thirty odd years of flying. If the west guys persist in being belligerent towards their legally constituted bargaining agent they are setting up the entire airline to fail. I have friends on both sides of the fence and would hate to see that happen.

Riiiiiiiiight. You hold the West responsible for attempting to burning this company down. Are you even remotely familiar with USAir's troubled history?

 

[Dan Roman]

If the west guys persist in being belligerent towards their legally constituted bargaining agent they are setting up the entire airline to fail.

Pal that was a REALLY stupid thing to say.

 

[Lampshade]

Earlier I said I would pay my dues and I will. But I will hold out as long as I can. I'm not gonna risk my job over $250 a month.

This is where the men get separated from the boys.

 

[Thebadcat1313]

"Westies, we know that you are not happy about the representation but we would like a chance to show you how we can be better than ALPA. We want a strong unified pilot group and we know that we are ALL in this together. We want every pilot at US Airways to participate and make this a stung airline. From here on out there is no East or West but one unified group."?


Fly-n-hi,

I agree that USAPA should be reaching out to the West in this way, and frankly I didn't know they had not done this yet. I'm going to call my reps and ask what is being done and make the suggestion that they get on it.

As for DOH, I'm sure they are going to stick to that effort. But what if enough conditions and restrictions are put in place so that none of your career expectations are harmed? Why is this not OK? Were you guys just about to buy A330's and start PHL-CDG? It seems like all I hear from any of you is that your were all going to upgrade in 5 years and so you should still upgrade in 5. Well, sorry, but you work for a bigger airline now, and bigger airlines tend to have longer upgrades.

There is a lot of irrationality on both sides of this coin. If you're right and Nic sticks, well then I guess I'll congratulate you guys on obtaining impenetrable furlough protection. I'll tell you, part of Dave O'Dell's career expectations were not that he would go from being the last guy on the list to having 1500 behind him almost overnight.

In any case, I'll pass along your ideas to USAPA. We certainly would be better off working together.

Dave O'Dell had a reasonable expectation that he would have a 20% cushion below him by now, which would have easily insulated him from furlough. Its not about how many you have junior to you, its about the percentage that are junior to you when it comes to furlough time. Even with the nic award, he has nowhere near 1500 junior to him, not even close. If you're going to throw numbers around, get them right. It's more like 600-700, and that includes the new hires and CEL folks, and it took him until two years into the merger to have that. And, since you pointed out that its such a bigger airline, that means that those 700 behind Dave only put him 12-13% from the bottom, and that's assuming the Nic is used. Under DOH, he's still only 173 from the bottom. That means that after 3-1/2 years on the property, he's only 3% from the bottom under DOH. That's the problem with you east people, you don't bother to gather the facts before you spout off about this stuff. The reality is that Dave is going to be furloughed while those who were deep in the furlough when the merger happened will keep working. Oh yeah, and most of us don't give a rats ass about your international flying. You can have it.

 

[SOVT]

Pal that was a REALLY stupid thing to say.

And you think that employee relations don't show up on the bottom line?

Better let SWA in on that one.

 

[SOVT]

Riiiiiiiiight. You hold the West responsible for attempting to burning this company down. Are you even remotely familiar with USAir's troubled history?

No, I think both groups ought to work together to resolve the seniority issue. I want my godson, the son of a West pilot, to have a dad thats got a job to go to. I also want the good folks (believe it or not there are a lot of good guys there) that I used to work with to enjoy whats left of their career and see some reward for their years of painful service.


Yep, intimately familiar, spent a decade and a half there before moving on to greener pastures a number of years ago.

 

[Fly-n-hi]

This is where the men get separated from the boys.

I would say this is where the intelligent get seperated from the unintelligent but let's save that for another thread.

I'll argue about it if you want but I'd rather focus on the issue at hand.

 

[becket]

And you think that employee relations don't show up on the bottom line?

Better let SWA in on that one.

Go cry to Scabford and his merry band of impotents. USAPA galvanized the AWA group like never before. The east wanted to burn down the house over the Nic award. In a round about way, they'll get what they asked for.

Crosby Stills and Nash had a song entitled "King Midas in Reverse" which was basically about a guy that whatever he touched turned to sh.., not gold. I guess they wrote that song about US Air.

 

[reepicheep]

The actions of the west or east pilot groups aren't going to affect the final outcome much...usair is pretty much back where it was in the early 90's, or after 911. Highest costs in the industry with Southwest besieging them on all fronts. A route structure weighted heavily toward short-haul regional flying in the northeast, with a relatively small international network. And the cash is dwindling and the industry is melting down. A few east pilots running the apu is a drop in the bucket. This place is toast.