When I say work rules, I mean things controllable by contract. You can somewhat control duty days and what not (we do slightly in our contract), but more things that help increase your quality of life.
Some examples from me personally in September:
Block hours flown: 62.
Pay hours: 105.
Recurrent training days paid at 150% time because of "training on days off request" in contract: 3
Days "off" but still paid because my trip was dropped for new-hire OE: 4
I just had a trip dropped that starts tomorrow that I'm still paid for, even though at noon today I could be released if they do not have another pairing for me. If they do reassign me, I get paid for the higher of the trip dropped or actual trip flown. Now, after 12:00 noon, if I pick up a trip, that trip is paid as "add" pay, so I'm getting paid for a four-day trip worth 22 hours that was dropped, and another trip worth 20 hours on top of that picked up in open time. That is 42 hours for 20 hours work. My other option is to stay at home and get paid the 22 hours for doing nothing (knock on wood, they'll reassign me now!
). All quality of life enhancements.
Another example: As a CA, my hourly rate would be $56 on the 37-seat scale. However, for every minute flying a 50-seat jet, I would be paid at $64 an hour. We have 30 37-seat jets out of 274 aircraft. If you just take the hourly rate and add three zeros (a general way to determine annual pay), that contract improvement changes what would be $56,000 a year to $64,000 a year if I never flew a 37-seater. That is not chump change.
I am not knocking Comair with this statement, nor am I chest-pounding regarding our contract; however, I would say that even though our hourly rate was behind Comair's contract, I think overall we make well above them in terms of actual pay due to work rules and profit sharing. Comparing the two, you would think Comair is the higher paid by a simple Rate x Guarantee x 12 months. But airline pay is too fluid, and you must look at it from a different viewpoint.
Please do not think I am bragging in this post, because that could not be farther from the truth. I am simply trying to use personal examples to show how work rule improvements are an extremely important part of any contract. You cannot base things on the pay rate alone. This goes for all airlines, not just the regionals. This was something that I did not understand until I was hired here, and now that my eyes are open to this fact I would like to help other pilots realize this as well. I know for a fact that when a TA comes out, all pilots turn immediately to the "compensation" section to determine how they will vote. I think we need to look past that, and I think future regional contracts need to have a larger span of attack than just pay.
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