The L.O,A. for the Flight Options pilots was ratified by the union when the contract was ratified.
Why any changes should be made now?
Oh I see may be when the wind change, the Union change their mind!
Look out for a big law suit if this happens
Wrong. First of all, the L.O.A. wasn't "ratified" at all. If I am not mistaken, the company wanted two year L.O.A.'s but the contract stated that up to one year could be granted by the company and the union held them to it, because that is what the contract says. So what happens when the one year is up? Do they come back?... or do they stay at Flexjet and give up their Flight Options seniority number? What would be the incentive for the union to voluntarily allow the company to break the contract? I don't have the answers here, but you really need to look at this from every perspective, not just your own, or management will play us all like pawns. Heck, the very fact that the Gulfstreams are even on the Flexjet side is part of the whipsaw. FYI, Kenn Ricci announced we would be adding a Gulfstream program long before he announced the purchase of Flexjet, and even though we didn't know what the mid cabin replacement was for the C-X program, we knew it was coming, we just didn't know they would be offering incentives and migrating the mid-cabin FO customers to the Legacy 450/500's or Challenger 300/350's. He bought a lot of votes putting them on the Non-Union Flexjet side of the house and even more by allowing certain Flight Options pilots a way to circumvent seniority. This is the old divide and conquer strategy, and you can bet this will play out during fence negotiations as well. In fact, there is nothing in the current Flight Options fleet that is part of the "Go Forward" plan, except the Phenoms
(which are being sold under the Flexjet brand) because Flight Options brand is being phased out. So now, after fences are complete, if the Flight Options pilots fly anything other than one of the dying fleets or a Phenom, then management will tell the Flexjet pilots that the union is forcing them to give away your flying opportunities. Conversely, if the union keeps rigid fences as they are now, then he will tell all the Flight Options pilots that the union is forcing him to deny them the opportunities in the "go-forward" fleets that they would have otherwise. It is a very difficult and precarious position to be in, because either way it ends up, KR will try to spin it as the union being our enemy. The same thing goes for SLI. No matter how fair the SLI committee tries to be, it is almost guaranteed that nobody will be happy except the person that ends up as #1. Management will try to spin that too. Divide and conquer is all it really is. What we ALL need to do is start thinking about getting past SLI and developing real solidarity. It shouldn't be Flexjet pilots against Flight Options pilots. For now, it should be the Onesky pilots against Onesky management, and until we all realize this, they will continue to whipsaw and play us against each other. If both groups keep thinking about nothing more than themselves and don't start think about us as one big group, then we are already doomed. However, if we can quit thinking selfishly and get some solidarity, then we can negotiate a good Joint CBA, put the negotiations and rhetoric behind us, and go out in to the market place and kick some a$$! Then we all benefit.
