pilotyip said:
Frontier was the lowest average pay
YIP, if memory serves, the numbers said that Frontier averaged 78K, and Spirit averaged 81K. My rate, junior to Captaindawg, is about 84k base, before any OT (of which there has been NONE lately). If our average is 81K, they must have gotten that by counting our 1/4 million dollar OPs VP's

.
At the bottom of the page, as we are, there's not any real honor in being above Frontier. Effectively, we are in a statistical dead heat for last.
I hesitate to discuss the concession topic here, but I know that some are curious and interested in Spirit.
Here's my take. We renewed our agreement twenty months ago. In that contract, we gave the company everything they wanted. We agreed to change: how our pay is computed, how our bid months transition, how our minimun daily pay is derived, and reduced our min guarantee by 8 hours a month. For the Kerry supporters out there....We also agreed to a 32% pay cut. (I'm using government math to derive that pay cut. In this case, the company had publicly stated their acceptance that we would be able to command a 50% increase, but due to the negotiating environment, we only received an 18% raise. In effect we took a 32% cut from the promised rate.)
After getting everything that they wanted, the company has constantly reinterpreted the language of the contract. After 20 months, we still have pay issues. The company still refuses to conceed that the plain language of the contract is indeed plain. They are forcing, and have forced pilots to fight for what is owed. Every payperiod, period after period, we have filed countless contract "non compliance" reports, and countless greivances. Most of the time, the pilot eventually gets the pay, unfortunately, a lot of pilots don't bother to fight and end up losing a couple of hours a month. It appears that management made a specific, considered decision to be adversarial on pay.
Which brings us to the present. Now, management declares a need for concessions, but the pilots are 99% pissed off about the adversarial environment, so we all told our union reps to tell the company to pound sand. Besides, we don't believe that they need concessions. They did't come to us offering to pay more during the three quarters where they made record profits, so why come to us after one quarter of loss?
It looks like our MEC told managemt to pound sand last Friday. Way to go men!
I personally do not believe that management had any real desire to get concessions with this ploy. I think that they were trying to determine how much resolve we the pilots hold. If they had seen weakness, THEN, they would have gone after something even bigger. What I don't know.
If any of you flightinfo guys happen to meet one of us, please take the time to give your support. If you think Deltas concessions affect you, any concessions NK makes could affect you even more.
regards,
enigma