Proof that mainline hates gojet!

[Gofish]

KerosenSnorter
Pilots: No, just add then W/O guys to the mainline list and then buy all the RJ's you want.

Ummmm...yes...can we please do this now?

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

KerosenSnorter
Pilots: No, just add then W/O guys to the mainline list and then buy all the RJ's you want.

Ummmm...yes...can we please do this now?

Sorry, I am afraid that the time has passed for that one. Oddly enough the W/O guys at the time were not too fond of it.....when approached with the possibility of trying to get mgmt to go for it by the mainline MEC the biggest of the w/o pilot groups wanted to be integrated into the mainline list by their DOH! Hmm, 10 years as a Dash 8 pilot....yeah that should set me right up for the left seat on a 757! Never mind that they didn't have an ounce of jet time in their log book. You can imagine the reaction they got from the mec reps that approached them about it.

But that was what was needed. So many of our problems would be solved today if that had been pulled off. USAir is finally trying to get control back with the 190, and Jetblue is making sure they keep control in the first place. As long as the rest follow suit we may be able to claw our way back to a decent living in our lifetime.

 

[Gofish]

Yea...I agree...DOH for WO's will never work. A staple job will. It boggles the mind, especially considering WO lifers would have the same relative seniority in type. Essentially, the senior guys would lose nothing and possibly have much to gain.

Glad to see at least the 190 is where it belongs. It baffles me what we subject our passengers to when they can buy a comparably priced ticket on a JB E190 with leather seats and satellite TV. We needed E190's like yesterday.

Hope I get a chance to fly with you all.

 

[Smarta$$]

Yet another history lesson needed......oh well..

No it was not so different after all.

My carrier is typical of what happened,

Time line:

CEO approached pilot group about RJ's, Pilot group says sure, when do you want to negotiate a pay rate? Simple task really, already had an F-28 and F-100 payrates in the contract...just add a CRJ and buy all he (Ceo) wants.

(CEO) No No No, you do not understand, I want them at the regionals!
Pilots: Sorry no, we fly all the jets.

CEO: But that means hiring more pilots and furloughing the regional Wholly owned guys.

Pilots: No, just add then W/O guys to the mainline list and then buy all the RJ's you want.



6 months go buy, constant contract violations etc etc, pressure to release authority for 20 CRJ's to lowest bidder.........Pilots still say no, we fly all jets.

In the mean time every regional partner pilot is out for our head because we will not "give" them the jets...jumpseats get hard to get for mainline guys at contract and wholly owned carriers.

12 months go by, pilot group finally relents and tries to get jets for Wholly owned partners only in limited numbers, in exchange for payrate increase and retirement increase. 20 jets total or so.

Jets end up going to lowest bidder(not a wholly owned)....scumbag pilot group takes delivery of first CRJ's in our airlines history and agrees to Capt. payrate lower than the 2nd year F/O rate we had on the F-28!!!

Fast forward 2 years and still limited and controlled number of RJ's......CEO drags company down with poor decisions and takes us through planned BK and publically states that "RJ's are Union Busters!"

BK judge allows freeforall guts contract, kills the retirement and allows nearly unlimited RJ's to fly for us.

6 count them 6 pilot groups quickly step up to the plate to whore them selves out so they can fly the jet....for alpo wages.

What part of the above story says "Mainline gave up the scope willingly"???



As I said, the Go jet story is very very very familier to thousands of furloughed pilots out there.


EDIT: Smart a$$.....You gotta be kidding me!!! Just looked over your posts!!! You have been an airline pilot a grand total of about 10 months and you are spouting off about "Mainline gave up the scope"!!!!!!!

Judging by your posts and hire date you were still in school when all that happened, maybe even high school!

There is a good chance that I have been furloughed since before you were a Private pilot!!

I suggest you lay off the militant attitude until you are at least off probation!

Sheesh.


For the record, Go jets IS worse than what happened to us.....but not by much, same software program.....different version, RJ infestation was version 1.0....Go- jets is version 1.2. I hear mgmt. is already working on version 2.0!

First of all, I am sick of people comparing the two situations. Yes Goatjet is worse. Thank you. Mainline did give up thier scope. Under pressure yes. But we are all under pressure. Regional pilots are under pressure to take a shatty contract or our existing flying goes to the next lowest bidder. Mainline was under pressure to give up scope or lose pay rates or retirement. So your saying that the pressure you were under is more valid than the pressure put on regional pilots? Accept for the scope that you gave up, your job was not subject to the lowest bid. That is a profound difference in leverage. You had alot of leverage and we have none.

If you want to raise the average wage in this profession, than figure out a way in the mainline contract to set pilot wages at the regional level in your mainline contract. For example, the NWA TA specifies what the Compass pilots must be paid. This was because NWA furloughs might have to staff the airline. But the idea could be the same. For example, All regional feed for Delta feed will be paid X as a minimum. If this were in a mainline contract it would help insure that musical Rjs and lowest bid race would have less of an impact. Side benefit, if regional wages were much higher management would have less incentive to keep taking your flying and contracting cheap regionals.

I know that will never happen, but it would help. Mainline pilots have simply not given regional pilots the leverage they need to raise wages. We have almost know power. In your responce to me that focused on why I should have no opinion of the state of the industry that I am involved, you did not comment on how we have the entire deck stacked against us. You want to blame us for all the problems of the industry, yet you have failed to recognize that we HAVE NO LEVERAGE. If things are to improve, we need mainline support and collective solutions. We have seen what happens to regionals that take a stand for improvement. Either they lose their flying to someone that is cheaper or they start an alter ego to get cheaper wages and avoid negotiating with the existing pilot group (job and pilot replacement workers).

For all you pilots that keep saying that TSA should have had scope to protect them, THEY DID. THEY STILL DO. The company found a loop hole. THE PILOTS DID NOT GIVE IT UP. EVER. Not even for retirement or pay rates. Gayjet is a different situation and should be treated differently.

 

[outtahere]

12 months go by, pilot group finally relents and tries to get jets for Wholly owned partners only in limited numbers, in exchange for payrate increase and retirement increase. 20 jets total or so.



So what you are saying is you gave up scope for a pay raise and better retirement that you have since lost. Its like blameing the salesman for making a bad deal on a new car. It just doesn't make sense. Mainline gave up the scope for what ever selfish reason. You were not in bankruptcy the first time you gave it up, so don't blame the guy flying around in a turboprop for wanting to fly something better, blame yourself for being shortsighted and selfish. In case you haven't leaned from history, if you give up anymore scope then someone who is lower paid will be flying an EMB-175 for half of what a 737 pilot makes. So do you think they may give you another raise?

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

First of all, I am sick of people comparing the two situations. Yes Goatjet is worse. Thank you. Mainline did give up thier scope. Under pressure yes. But we are all under pressure. Regional pilots are under pressure to take a shatty contract or our existing flying goes to the next lowest bidder. Mainline was under pressure to give up scope or lose pay rates or retirement. So your saying that the pressure you were under is more valid than the pressure put on regional pilots? Accept for the scope that you gave up, your job was not subject to the lowest bid. That is a profound difference in leverage. You had alot of leverage and we have none.

If you want to raise the average wage in this profession, than figure out a way in the mainline contract to set pilot wages at the regional level in your mainline contract. For example, the NWA TA specifies what the Compass pilots must be paid. This was because NWA furloughs might have to staff the airline. But the idea could be the same. For example, All regional feed for Delta feed will be paid X as a minimum. If this were in a mainline contract it would help insure that musical Rjs and lowest bid race would have less of an impact. Side benefit, if regional wages were much higher management would have less incentive to keep taking your flying and contracting cheap regionals.

I know that will never happen, but it would help. Mainline pilots have simply not given regional pilots the leverage they need to raise wages. We have almost know power. In your responce to me that focused on why I should have no opinion of the state of the industry that I am involved, you did not comment on how we have the entire deck stacked against us. You want to blame us for all the problems of the industry, yet you have failed to recognize that we HAVE NO LEVERAGE. If things are to improve, we need mainline support and collective solutions. We have seen what happens to regionals that take a stand for improvement. Either they lose their flying to someone that is cheaper or they start an alter ego to get cheaper wages and avoid negotiating with the existing pilot group (job and pilot replacement workers).

For all you pilots that keep saying that TSA should have had scope to protect them, THEY DID. THEY STILL DO. The company found a loop hole. THE PILOTS DID NOT GIVE IT UP. EVER. Not even for retirement or pay rates. Gayjet is a different situation and should be treated differently.

We had no leverage either, the regional pilots kept undercutting us everytime we tried to make a stand. Go -jets is simply the next step beyond that.

By the time the regional guys figured out they screwed themselves by accepting the flying for garbage wages and tried to correct it mgmt. simply implimented phase 2.......alter ego.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

12 months go by, pilot group finally relents and tries to get jets for Wholly owned partners only in limited numbers, in exchange for payrate increase and retirement increase. 20 jets total or so.



So what you are saying is you gave up scope for a pay raise and better retirement that you have since lost. Its like blameing the salesman for making a bad deal on a new car. It just doesn't make sense. Mainline gave up the scope for what ever selfish reason. You were not in bankruptcy the first time you gave it up, so don't blame the guy flying around in a turboprop for wanting to fly something better, blame yourself for being shortsighted and selfish. In case you haven't leaned from history, if you give up anymore scope then someone who is lower paid will be flying an EMB-175 for half of what a 737 pilot makes. So do you think they may give you another raise?

Actually the alter ego thing was used against us, among other threats.

The regional MEC's also put considerable pressure on the mainline to release jets to them.

And the final nail was the payrates they were willing to fly it for, once mgmt. heard that, there was no way they were going to let the RJ come to mainline....they knew we (mainline pilots) would never allow them to be flown for those wages at the time. So mainline MEC figured all they could hope to do was control the number of them and improve the contract.

Fast forward 6 years and mainline wages have been dragged down to match the regionals......again no way that could have happened if the regionals had held the line to at least getting a semi fair wage for the rj. We didn't have the power to stop it ourselves without regional pilots backing, however you guys are quick to blame us for not helping now!!! Well sorry, but you cut our johnsons off back in 01 and 02 so now the mainline does not have any leverage left....the regional pilots shiney jet syndrome saw to that.

 

[KeroseneSnorter]

Just for informational purposes for the young loudmouths that came into the industry AFTER all this happened...here are some pay rates to consider.

You are going to hate comparing them to your payscale on the RJ.

1998 payrate for RJ's. RJ being defined as F-28's, prior to the regional boys whoring themselves out.

F-28 second Year Capt. $92.42
F-28 second year F/O $46.21

Even now 8 years later RJ payrates don't even come close to this number.

That is what mainline tried to preserve...and with the regional pilots help we could have done it, Instead we had the rug pulled out from under us Go jet style....get the jet at any price.

 

[f/o(forever)]

Just for informational purposes for the young loudmouths that came into the industry AFTER all this happened...here are some pay rates to consider.

You are going to hate comparing them to your payscale on the RJ.

1998 payrate for RJ's. RJ being defined as F-28's, prior to the regional boys whoring themselves out.

F-28 second Year Capt. $92.42
F-28 second year F/O $46.21

Even now 8 years later RJ payrates don't even come close to this number.

That is what mainline tried to preserve...and with the regional pilots help we could have done it, Instead we had the rug pulled out from under us Go jet style....get the jet at any price.

Thats all nice but when I signed up at a "regional airline" in 1999, I expected to work in a turbo prop for 5 years and then go to a mailline carrier. We had turbo props that seated 70 seaters, so when the new rj's came out and mainline didn't want to fly 50 seaters the logical place to put them was at the regional level( logical from a business standpoint). PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME THAT THOSE DECISIONS MADE ANY REGIONAL EMPLOYEE HAPPY. Remember we want to build our time and the move on to mainline! I signed on to a union airline knowing this industry and how important solidarity is, ie my father was an alpa pilot. We used alpa to negotiate our contract, and to my knowledge mainline still has more members in alpa then regional pilots. So how can you say we negotiated a lowest price to fly the rj's? Everyone at alpa could have stopped this in the beginning but no wanted to. Gayjets on the other hand went against an alpa contract, THIS IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! I agree with you that alter ego was the next step from management, That is what we try to prevent with contracts. The next step may be for airlines to charge pilots right seat time so they can get experience, does that mean we blame the new kid that just wants a job or do we prevent this from happening in the first place by not allowing it at a contract level? WE AS UNION PILOTS NEED TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM, NOT ARGUE OVER WHO STARTED IT. The individuals with the current power of negotiating are the only ones that can still do anything. 500 TSA pilots or 8000 united pilots, who do you think has more power?? Ask any regional pilot if they would like to work at a mainline carrier, and given the few that live at base, I bet most would love to go to mainline!

 

[Smarta$$]

We had no leverage either, the regional pilots kept undercutting us everytime we tried to make a stand. Go -jets is simply the next step beyond that.

By the time the regional guys figured out they screwed themselves by accepting the flying for garbage wages and tried to correct it mgmt. simply implimented phase 2.......alter ego.

Your leverage was scope! Very powerful. If no one else can do the flying, than they have to negotiate in good faith with you. But you guys gave that up. We never had the leverage that you gave up.