kellwolf
Piece of Trash
The problem is we know both sets, the Neeleman management style and the current one. I think a majority of us would have preferred Neeleman. Yeah, he's not a fan of unions, but I can't think of many entrepreneurs or corporate CEOs that are, honestly. However, you don't have to be a "friend of pilots or unions" to make things work. What we had before the ALPA vote (and still have) is worse than what I've heard under Neeleman. At least with him, if he said he'd do something, it would happen or he'd give you the honest reasons it didn't. I've only been here a couple of years, and I've already seen some pretty shady stuff, particularly when it comes to pay scales and work rules. The running deal was that we had a "peer set" of airlines that our rates were based off. You take the 5 year 320 CA, average that out, set our 5 year at that, and every other pay rate is a percentage based from that. Basically, an intern with an Excel spreadsheet could take an industry snap shot and have it done in less than an hour. Not here. Even after some pretty extensive analysis, massive slide shows and a bit of song and dance, it still took several months. Then it still came up short. The first year it was a whopping 2%, basically because they took the snap shot before some raises kicked in and before a merger or four were announced. I can live with that, just means we make it up the next time around. Wrong. Same process, theoretically, but it takes even more months this time because they realize they screwed themselves last year. So, what we get is a NEW peer set with new airlines added in to drive down the average. In addition to that, the raise is spread over a few years, so by the time we get to where we should be, we'll be behind again.
I think what sat wrong with me the most was management arbitrarily changing the peer set to lower the average. They came up with some pretty weak excuses and were re-defining what a "destination carrier" was in order to justify it. Hell, they even had airlines like AirTran still in there that won't exist after this year. US Air and American were still separate for a while, too. I'll have to go back and look, but I think they were STILL separate based on the fact that the "merger could still fall through" at the time the pay rates came out. Instead of doing the right thing, it looked like they had a dollar figure in mind, changed the rules to make it work out then set it up to where they could finance it over a few years.
At least under Neeleman a lot of guys figure we would have gotten one of two things: a) what was promised or b) a no BS explanation as to why it couldn't be delivered. While our latest growth has been seasonal service to Hyannis and a couple of departures a week to Curacao, Azul is getting 330s and expanding from a domestic carrier to a long haul international carrier. If Neeleman had stuck around, I have a feeling jetBlue would either a) be completely gone due to over extending itself or b) be flying 330s to South America, Hawaii and MAYBE Europe.
Change is scary, but I'm honestly not sure who wants Barger to exit faster, the pilot group or the investors. Our stock shot up a LOT over the past several weeks, but it's kinda stagnated now. It hasn't been because of any awesome management moves, though. I think it's been because the operation finally got their act together. And if we thought things were bad before we voted ALPA, things appear to be getting worse. It's gotten extremely antagonistic between the pilot group and management lately. Barger has gone on Bloomberg and (honestly) sounded like a petulant child after the union vote. What he SHOULD have done is say "Well, that's behind us, let's move forward." Even months later, he doesn't miss a chance to take a shot at us for voting in a union. Then they'll do things like make July 4th a paid holiday for everyone BUT the pilots. Although, to be fair they probably would have done the same even if we hadn't voted in ALPA since they would have said it's not a "special pay day" in the PEA. The open door policy that was almost a joke before doesn't even exist now. They won't even talk to us on things they'd at least mention in passing before. Things like dues check off for the pilots so we don't have to write a check to ALPA on our own every month are an "item to be negotiated" according to management, even though it won't cost them a red cent. If I can have things like the Blue Pilot Fund or the jetBlue Crisis Fund deducted from my paycheck without issue, I'm pretty sure they could set it up to deduct union dues without a problem, or even a cost to them. It's a psychological thing where they want the pilots to reminded on a monthly basis what it's "costing" them to have a union.
The sad part is, it might be working. I saw ALPA (from a close distance) voted in over at Colgan, and that was with a hostile management force as well. It didn't take NEAR as long to get off the ground as this is taking. Voting for interim reps FINALLY closes on Sept 10th, and then they get to vote on an MEC. This is still not the representative format we signed up for. We were all VERY happy with the silo format we had before, and ALPA assured us we could set up whatever format we wanted once we got rolling. Haven't heard ONE WORD about going back to the silo format, and that worries me. I'm not alone in that, too. It's an issue that's going to have to be addressed soon. For those not familiar, the silo format breaks the seniority list into "blocks" instead of the CA/FO rep from each base. So, the seniority block gets a rep, and he represents those in his seniority block rather than CAs or FOs from his base. To me, this makes it more of a company wide representation system than an "us vs them," CA vs FO or base vs base I saw at Pinnacle. One of the major questions asked during the union drive was "Can we keep the silo system?" Answer was "Yes," and that led a lot of guys to go ahead and check the box. If they come back and then say "No, you have to stick with the CA/FO base rep system," management isn't going to be the only one breaking promises.
Honestly, I'm frustrated with how long it's taking just to get the basic systems up and running. At least my local reps are good at communicating, and I know they'll be staying around as the permanent guys. They all ran unopposed. The company has shut up and stopped communicating anything more than what we have to pull out of them, which lately has been FAR 117 stuff, so who knows when actual negotiations will start. There's no shortage of guys wanting to volunteer for committees, and there's a website set up for people to sign up for them. That's much better than the "Track down the committee chair and try to convince him to let you in" style from the PCL MEC. However, we can't even set up committee chairs until we have an MEC, and the chairs can't start the committees until they actually exist. We can't negotiate or sign any LOAs because everyone we have right now is interim, so they can't agree to anything since they weren't elected. The only thing I hear from the national end of things is we need to be strong in the face of NAI, buy our insurance plan and here's your monthly bill.
I think what sat wrong with me the most was management arbitrarily changing the peer set to lower the average. They came up with some pretty weak excuses and were re-defining what a "destination carrier" was in order to justify it. Hell, they even had airlines like AirTran still in there that won't exist after this year. US Air and American were still separate for a while, too. I'll have to go back and look, but I think they were STILL separate based on the fact that the "merger could still fall through" at the time the pay rates came out. Instead of doing the right thing, it looked like they had a dollar figure in mind, changed the rules to make it work out then set it up to where they could finance it over a few years.
At least under Neeleman a lot of guys figure we would have gotten one of two things: a) what was promised or b) a no BS explanation as to why it couldn't be delivered. While our latest growth has been seasonal service to Hyannis and a couple of departures a week to Curacao, Azul is getting 330s and expanding from a domestic carrier to a long haul international carrier. If Neeleman had stuck around, I have a feeling jetBlue would either a) be completely gone due to over extending itself or b) be flying 330s to South America, Hawaii and MAYBE Europe.
Change is scary, but I'm honestly not sure who wants Barger to exit faster, the pilot group or the investors. Our stock shot up a LOT over the past several weeks, but it's kinda stagnated now. It hasn't been because of any awesome management moves, though. I think it's been because the operation finally got their act together. And if we thought things were bad before we voted ALPA, things appear to be getting worse. It's gotten extremely antagonistic between the pilot group and management lately. Barger has gone on Bloomberg and (honestly) sounded like a petulant child after the union vote. What he SHOULD have done is say "Well, that's behind us, let's move forward." Even months later, he doesn't miss a chance to take a shot at us for voting in a union. Then they'll do things like make July 4th a paid holiday for everyone BUT the pilots. Although, to be fair they probably would have done the same even if we hadn't voted in ALPA since they would have said it's not a "special pay day" in the PEA. The open door policy that was almost a joke before doesn't even exist now. They won't even talk to us on things they'd at least mention in passing before. Things like dues check off for the pilots so we don't have to write a check to ALPA on our own every month are an "item to be negotiated" according to management, even though it won't cost them a red cent. If I can have things like the Blue Pilot Fund or the jetBlue Crisis Fund deducted from my paycheck without issue, I'm pretty sure they could set it up to deduct union dues without a problem, or even a cost to them. It's a psychological thing where they want the pilots to reminded on a monthly basis what it's "costing" them to have a union.
The sad part is, it might be working. I saw ALPA (from a close distance) voted in over at Colgan, and that was with a hostile management force as well. It didn't take NEAR as long to get off the ground as this is taking. Voting for interim reps FINALLY closes on Sept 10th, and then they get to vote on an MEC. This is still not the representative format we signed up for. We were all VERY happy with the silo format we had before, and ALPA assured us we could set up whatever format we wanted once we got rolling. Haven't heard ONE WORD about going back to the silo format, and that worries me. I'm not alone in that, too. It's an issue that's going to have to be addressed soon. For those not familiar, the silo format breaks the seniority list into "blocks" instead of the CA/FO rep from each base. So, the seniority block gets a rep, and he represents those in his seniority block rather than CAs or FOs from his base. To me, this makes it more of a company wide representation system than an "us vs them," CA vs FO or base vs base I saw at Pinnacle. One of the major questions asked during the union drive was "Can we keep the silo system?" Answer was "Yes," and that led a lot of guys to go ahead and check the box. If they come back and then say "No, you have to stick with the CA/FO base rep system," management isn't going to be the only one breaking promises.
Honestly, I'm frustrated with how long it's taking just to get the basic systems up and running. At least my local reps are good at communicating, and I know they'll be staying around as the permanent guys. They all ran unopposed. The company has shut up and stopped communicating anything more than what we have to pull out of them, which lately has been FAR 117 stuff, so who knows when actual negotiations will start. There's no shortage of guys wanting to volunteer for committees, and there's a website set up for people to sign up for them. That's much better than the "Track down the committee chair and try to convince him to let you in" style from the PCL MEC. However, we can't even set up committee chairs until we have an MEC, and the chairs can't start the committees until they actually exist. We can't negotiate or sign any LOAs because everyone we have right now is interim, so they can't agree to anything since they weren't elected. The only thing I hear from the national end of things is we need to be strong in the face of NAI, buy our insurance plan and here's your monthly bill.
I seem to remember that they usually publish pretty quickly after it closes. I'm just anxious to see where the numbers fall... like Ernie Gann, I've been thinking about the numbers a lot lately.