AirTran/SWA Seniority Integration Deal

Excuse my ignorance here but let me make sure I follow this. With any SLI somebody is gonna screwed be via slower upgrades/forced downgrades etc. correct? SWAPA didn't want it to be them and strong armed the resolution they wanted per the descriptions here.
My question is what was AT ALPA's "idea" for SLI was it as one sided benefits wise towards their pilot group or was the "pain" dispersed equally?

In our union "level" of experience means exactly 0. (Essentially a DOH seniority) If person A works 15 years and one day at the lowest facility level then tranfers to the highest level facility he is senior to person B who has worked 15 years and 0 days there regardless of complexityof experience. Basically in pilot terms C172 time =B777 time.

So in short I am trying to find the evil in DOH SLI..
 
Yes, I would still say that. Being an FO and being a captain are two very different jobs. Everyone likes to say it's only about the pay, because they don't want to sound egotistical, but the reality is that if you told a captain that you would give him an extra $10k a year to downgrade to FO, or he could stay in his captain seat for his current pay, then almost every single one would take the captain seat and give up the $10k. There is value in flying with your favorite captain every day.

If someone offered me SWA captain pay plus 10k and my current schedule I would pass out drinks in the back or run the blue juice truck. But that is just me. Flying doesn't get me hard, it's just a job. I hope this works out and SWA is stronger than ever, especially for the SWA haters. I am not happy we bought Airtran, but we did, and ofcourse I would love a staple, anyone who was in the same situation and wouldn't want a staple is on crack. I will treat all Airtan guys just the same as SWA guys, if you are a r I will treat you accordingly.

Boats n Hoes
 
Doug Taylor said:
Imagine the Navy and the Air Force combining into a single force.

Aaaaaaand both the Navy and the Air Force are comprised of 100% academy grads. The Colorado School for Wayward Boys on the Air Force side and Boat Skool on the Navy side.

.
Click to expand...

It's "Canoe U" for the Navy's ringknocker O's. AF one you write is correct. What they have in common is that they both suck. :)
 
Nick said:
One company was buying the other, though.

If they end up pissing off all of the AirTran pilots, they'd have to be weeding out 23% of the new pilot seniority list.

All I'm saying is, I agree with what RogerRoger said in that if the stuff ATN writes happens, this goes against the mentality that SWA has had in the past several decades. Yes, the groups must be integrated somehow -- but if one side thinks that it was unreasonable and unfair then there are going to be problems, that's all.
Click to expand...

Let's shift gears to Mesa's Jonathon Orenstein for a minute. He said something that is difficult to argue the logic of: "If I have mounds of resumes on my desk I am not under-paying my pilots" - or something to that effect.

Now, with that in mind, look at SWA's recent opening of their application window. How many thousands of resumes poured in for something like a hundred or two slots? Was it 5,000? More?

So, then you buy an airline...and the two pilot unions negotiate. As a company, your loyalty is to the group that has been with you and made you the dominant carrier that you are - it is NOT with the pilot group of the airline that the Board of Directors and shareholders thought was more valuable to sell than keep as an ongoing concern. That is just the facts, the shareholders at AT thought the offer they received from SWA exceeded the opportunity of keeping and operating the airline - that's why businesses get sold. So, faced with that - keeping YOUR pilots (a much larger group) happy, the fact that you could hire many thousands of pilots at a moments notice and they would step on their grandma to work for you, and the fact that the smaller pilot group - while having a nice little airline - was still more valuable as a commodity to sell than as an ongoing concern - I ask this: What would you do?

SWA offered a better deal in the previous offer (I think SLI 9) and the MEC voted it down without taking it to the pilot group. As a rebuttal, SWA/SWAPA came back with an offer that was substantially worse (yet saves SWA money) and puts a gun to their head and the MEC then is left to take that to the group. SWA knows that they can fire and replace the entire ATN pilot group based upon the response to their last hiring window opening (which would save even more money). They also know the value of the planes, routes, and other "hard" assets that are apart from the operational aspects of ATN (It would be interesting - take the gates, routes, equipment and subtract that value from what was actually paid - I wonder how much the premium was over the value of the hard assets?). They also know that by playing hardball with the newcomers they have further endeared themselves to their core-pilots who are the much bigger group. Finally, a small group of pilots may be disgruntled - but what about the FA's, rampers, and other ATN employees? Will they not improve their lives in some way with this acquisition? Since pilots are not the most prominent customer facing personnel, and since pilots complaining to rampers, fa's, and CS agents probably won't gain a lot of traction (because people hate to hear people who make more than them bitch about how bad they have it) - the risk to SWA is pretty small. Any bad behavior from the ATN group will be weeded out aggressively I would imagine. Once again, SWA has seemingly done this "the right way". If USAir would have been more proactive and aggressive like SWA perhaps that mess wouldn't have occurred?
 
Boo737 said:
ooh, I'm shaking in my boots.
Click to expand...

Do you really want to play this?

I'll be back from my run in about an hour, but let me know if you really want to engage in a penis-measuring contest. No sweat off my back.
 
Never get into a penis-measuring contest with a black guy.

Never get into a drinking contest with Boris.

Never compete with WacoFan for the affections of high-maintenance Jazz singers.

Never get into fights with little guys - it's the ones that can hit you with an overhand right to the nuts that you have to be leery of.

All these morels of knowledge will be condensed in a new book I'm writing with SeatClutcher called (tentatively) "Hey...Don't Be a Dumbass!"

Edit: That list, set to music, would be an awesome Jim Croce song.
 
mrivc211 said:
I agree, but the disparity between your two carriers wasn't of this magnitude. Would you feel the same way if say Delta would have bought Air Tran and they asked for the same DOH over DL pilots? I don't think a staple is a fair resolution, but asking for DOH is not fair and equitable either.
Click to expand...
.:dunno:
 
Boo737 said:
Oh, so now you're saying that since AT guys are bringing their airplanes, they should get to keep their seats? LOL!! Well SWA bought those aircraft in the purchase of AT for 3.2 Billion, so their not AT's airplane anymore. So how about this? AT Capt can fly their airplanes they brought with them, then they can fly in the right seat on the remaining 500 airplanes SWA has. That's your arguement is it not? As for taking the assets, don't think for minute that is not being thought out. We just started service in ATL and are starting to downsize AT there as we speak. Don't think SWA management is not positioning themselves for any possible scernio. And there would be no fireworks because it's perfectly legal for them to do just that. "G" holding company could just go out of business one day. Poof it's all gone.
Click to expand...

You are pure gold brother!
 
Matt13C said:
Is it really management vs ALPA, or does SWAPA have some say in this? I would guess they do.

I don't applaud tactics that put pilot groups at odds for the benefit of the company, although I dont see how that could be avoided in this situation, only minimized. I especially don't applaud potentially putting a group on the street. I just don't know how people didn't see this coming.
Click to expand...

With the great deal SWAPA is getting, why on earth would they say anything? If I were in their shoes, I'd be buying Champagne and cigars to celebrate all the upcoming upgrades they are gonna get.
 
Nick said:
That is the part that I do not understand.

After reading ATN's posts, depending on how SWA handles this the rest of the way through, they will seem to have completely lost the one thing that separates them from other companies, and that is labor relations.

They cannot possibly expect to bring the entire AirTran pilot group on board in a fashion that is highly unfair to them, and expect them to have good morale and be the type of employees that go out of their way to help the company save money and operate smoothly.

So without 100% of the employees on board, what are they?

An airline that flies all over the lower 48 but can't connect the business man from Savannah to Singapore, or Luanda to Seattle.

This will be very interesting to watch. SWA knows how to run an airline up until now -- very little outsourcing, customers love them, and they are profitable. But can they pull off a merge without turning it into the next US Airways?
Click to expand...


This^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
Polar742 said:
The breakdown being: 1) S-Sammich #2 is voted down 2) AirTran parted out and sold off - pilots on the street 3) lawsuits begin 4) 10-15 years prior to resolution?

Is that the scenario presented to you?
Click to expand...

Basically, yes. Number 2 could be delayed significantly, with them operating us separately for a while first, but it's clear that the threat is that we'll be out of our jobs eventually.

Boo737 said:
As for your pension, good luck with that, it will turn out like Delta.
Click to expand...

As was obvious previously, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. There is a difference between an A-Fund pension (a defined benefit plan), and a B-Fund pension (a defined contribution plan). B-Funds cannot be terminated in bankruptcy like A-Funds. The money in a B-Fund is your own money in your own account, just like a 401k. The difference is that you don't have to make a contribution to get the money in a B-Fund. The company just has to contribute, and you only contribute if you want to. In your case with the 401k, you don't get any money if you don't contribute, and if you do contribute, the company contribution is still less than what our contribution is even without us having to put in a dime. I wish you guys would wake up to the benefits of a B-Fund. That could be the next big contract gain that we could make as a combined pilot group.

As for what AT Captains make, well the pay rates are located on another forum and no AT Captains make $250,000/year. Sorry those numbers do not add up.
Click to expand...

You obviously aren't factoring in premium pay and other soft time. It's really not that hard for a senior captain to bring in $250k. We had lots of guys breaking $200k under the old contract's pay rates, and we didn't even have premium pay under that contract.

No one's holding a gun to your head there chief. Vote No! I hope all of you do, and get in line to interview at SWA and that will mean just more seniority for our guys.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's not a threat. :sarcasm:

ALPA put you in this position, no one else did.
Click to expand...

Gonzo said:
FedEx tried a in-house union it didn't work so they went back to ALPA, as far as DALPA I don't think it is going to happen.
Click to expand...

None of this is ALPA's fault. Waco can try to paint it that way if he wants, but this has nothing to do with ALPA. This has to do with our pilots making a decision on their own that the risks are too great, and they'd rather take the sure thing than fight for years. ALPA would give us full support whichever way we went, but the decision is ours, not ALPA's.

boondr said:
My question is what was AT ALPA's "idea" for SLI was it as one sided benefits wise towards their pilot group or was the "pain" dispersed equally?

So in short I am trying to find the evil in DOH SLI..
Click to expand...

We first proposed something a little bit less than relative seniority. It was less than relative seniority, because we were attempting to give them credit for their greater number of retirements. They said no. We eventually worked back to a DOH integration with seat protections for our captains. Still no dice with the SWAPA guys. We finally proposed DOH with our captains under the 50% mark losing their seats, which would have been a few hundred guys getting displaced to FO. They wouldn't even agree to look at our proposal. So, we end up where we are, with something far less than DOH.
 
Cptnchia said:
Not sure how you put up with trolls. I would have bounced him many posts ago. It's not like he's advocating people being fair to other people.
Click to expand...

I've never advocated fairness and yet he's let me troll for four years and multi-thousand posts. In fact, for my upcoming birthday I'd like him to rename JC "WacoFan" for a day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top