SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
I can understand the anger over midnight sim sessions. That's ridiculous. But you guys do realize that a 2 hour callout is industry standard, right?
Scope Bribe
- Thread starter Zapphod Beblebrox
- Start date
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
That seems like far worse language to me. Combined with management's rights language, they can basically change their definition of reasonable on a whim. Suddenly anything more than 90 minutes is unreasonable. Having firm language locked down is always better than hoping that vague language continues to work in your favor.
learhawkerbe400
Well-Known Member
Can someone explain the healthcare excise tax? I don't pay attention to politics (besides laughing at pilots who vote republican). If it's such a big concession how much is it going to cost me? A single dude with no kids in good health. I have no clue.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Awesome.
It depends on the total premiums paid between you and the company. As a single person with no kids on your plan, the limit for no excise tax is $10,200. Anything over that amount paid annually in premiums gets taxed at 40% of the amount over that limit. So if your total premiums were $12,000, then the last $1,800 would be subject to the excise tax, which would be a total tax to the plan of $720.
learhawkerbe400
Well-Known Member
Got it. Thanks.Awesome.
It depends on the total premiums paid between you and the company. As a single person with no kids on your plan, the limit for no excise tax is $10,200. Anything over that amount paid annually in premiums gets taxed at 40% of the amount over that limit. So if your total premiums were $12,000, then the last $1,800 would be subject to the excise tax, which would be a total tax to the plan of $720.
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L-16B
Well-Known Member
I knew you would like his post! HahaAwesome.
It depends on the total premiums paid between you and the company. As a single person with no kids on your plan, the limit for no excise tax is $10,200. Anything over that amount paid annually in premiums gets taxed at 40% of the amount over that limit. So if your total premiums were $12,000, then the last $1,800 would be subject to the excise tax, which would be a total tax to the plan of $720.
I wish there was a dislike button for that post, but I digress.
In one of the conference calls they said that if the tax comes into fruition our delta plus 3% wouldn't be above our delta and united average rates in the mou when it comes to take home pay.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Clarify for me how this would affect your rates. Is there something in the proposal that would pass on the excise tax to the employee? Because the law says the excise tax gets paid by the insurer, or by the company if the company is self-insured (as AMR probably is). Does the proposal say that your rates get reduced when they get hit with the excise tax to cover it?
L-16B
Well-Known Member
In the company proposal the tax costs are shifted to the employee. Let me see if the full language is on the apa website. I don't personally understand, so I will try to ask the question on the conference call tonight.
wheelsup
Well-Known Member
The only time you'd have to do an overnight sim session is if doing landing currency.
It's hardly anything to get riled up about, IMO. Having sims sitting there doing nothing 25% of the time is very wasteful.
I like the way Airways scheduled the training sims. The first day was a late/night time sim and it transitioned to an early morning sim by the end of the training program. It was commutable on both sides. It's like they actually cared about getting guys home to their families as soon as they could.
wheelsup
Well-Known Member
If you could, ask about the law and how the company would be able to get around that as well. Something tells me the APA isn't fully aware of how the law is worded.
That being said, I know contracts can supercede federal law in some cases, not sure if this is one of them or not.
L-16B
Well-Known Member
You must be on the bus because with the 1 190 sim we have we don't get that kind of schedule.
I'm hoping to be able to get my question in, no idea how busy the call will be. I'm typing up a summary for some guys that are flying as well.
AAPalmTree
Well-Known Member
Are you sure you don't work for American?
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
I don't think anything would prevent the company from passing on the cost to the employees. They would still be paying it, they would just be making up for it by reducing your pay. A sneaky way of doing things that doesn't match the intent of the law, but meets the letter of the law.
That said, the APA would have to be making a whole lot of assumptions to be able to tell you what the actual cost would end up being to the pilots. You would have to assume a certain rate of growth in premiums, which is difficult, as the growth rate has been going down in recent years. I believe it's almost flat next year. You would also have to assume that the law actually goes into effect as-is. We're talking about a provision of the ACA that doesn't even begin until 2018, while Congress and the President are likely to negotiate some sort of deal next year to make changes to the ACA. This is an area ripe for adjustment, as both companies and labor unions have a beef with it.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
No, I just value fairness.
wheelsup
Well-Known Member
Yeah I am
I'm surprised they didn't have a summary from the last one. All I got was a summary of the comments which doesn't give me much hope.
I should be able to listen in to this one if I can find the #, is it posted on the APA site?
learhawkerbe400
Well-Known Member
They will call you.
Zapphod Beblebrox
Inventor of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster
From Neil Roghair, former Negotiating Chair and now APA V.P....
Closed sessions of the APA Board aren't really that big of a mystery. They are simply the conversations that we would all expect to take place, but in a forum where board members can ask hard questions of the subject matter experts on the issues at hand and think out loud as they work aggressively to get to an informed and educated decision.
Here are a few thoughts so everyone can join in on the debate in front of us:
- The company move to take scope off the table is not insignificant and it was not just a red herring to distract us. US management fought tooth and nail to get 81 seats in the CLA and they were deeply frustrated when we moved it back to 76 seats in the 2012 CBA and the MOU. The Scott Kirby business model is to pack seats in airplanes. Seeing them let go of this ask is not an insignificant event.
- The current company proposal left on the table is basically pay rate increases, accompanied by some company asks. Some of which are negotiable and some which are less so from an APA perspective.
The choices before us:
- 1. We can say no (stick to our current proposal) and make as much noise as possible in an effort to get the company to improve their proposal and to move us to Delta compensation and work rules (This can involve changing the story of labor harmony on Wall Street which is priced into the current stock price). If the company had stuck to their scope ask, everyone in the building was more than okay with going to arbitration and just waiting for our mid-contract pay adjustment.
- 2. We can stick to our most recent proposal, which means (based upon our conversations with management) we will simply go to a cost-neutral arbitration in which any gain for us has to be met with an offsetting concession. In a scorched-earth path, there is a philosophy that management will eventually give us more than cost-neutral to keep the peace, especially now that the flight attendants have voted down their TA.
- 3. We can work off the company proposal, and try to make improvements to it. We can push back on the two-hour call out for short-call, the extra year of duration, the whole-sale combining of divisions, and other provisions. The company tells us they have moves they can make if we work off their proposal.
The company is clear on the following points:
- If APA comes back with its previous proposal, the company will respond with a proffer of arbitration which APA is obligated to accept
- Once the company proffers arbitration, the company proposal passed today, with no modifications of any kind, is the proposal which will remain on the table until some point prior to arbitration.
- If APA negotiates in good faith based on the framework of todays company proposal, the company will be open to a few modifications (including small economic modifications) in order to reach a mutual agreement.
As Tom Westbrook pointed out in another thread, we must all make decisions based upon the realities of MOU paragraph 27. While those are not terms we enjoy reading, they are the terms we must live with. During the MOU negotiations, we spent nearly three weeks fighting fiercely to get a JCBA step written into the process. The two managements and the UCC wanted us to agree that the MOU and the $87 million of LOA 13-08 would be the JCBA and we would be done. The only way to get a JCBA step written into the process was to agree that if a mutual agreement was not reached, an arbitration backstop would be constrained to the same economic parameters as the MTA, and the arbitrator could not make any changes to scope.
As we are all keenly aware in this industry, things change. For everyone who argued fiercely to get a JCBA step written into the MOU, none of us would have imagined a dynamic where a $1.2 billion offer from the company would be on the table.
But things change. The discussion in closed session is how to extract the maximum value for all pilots out of our current situation in our quest to close the gap with Delta, which we all believe in our hearts that we deserve.
Contact your domicile reps with your thoughts and opinions. The decisions ahead of us are huge and the membership needs to be engaged, at least at a high level of awareness, of the major decision points in front of all of us.....including the potential outcomes if this goes to arbitration.
A Bird in Hand..........?
Closed sessions of the APA Board aren't really that big of a mystery. They are simply the conversations that we would all expect to take place, but in a forum where board members can ask hard questions of the subject matter experts on the issues at hand and think out loud as they work aggressively to get to an informed and educated decision.
Here are a few thoughts so everyone can join in on the debate in front of us:
- The company move to take scope off the table is not insignificant and it was not just a red herring to distract us. US management fought tooth and nail to get 81 seats in the CLA and they were deeply frustrated when we moved it back to 76 seats in the 2012 CBA and the MOU. The Scott Kirby business model is to pack seats in airplanes. Seeing them let go of this ask is not an insignificant event.
- The current company proposal left on the table is basically pay rate increases, accompanied by some company asks. Some of which are negotiable and some which are less so from an APA perspective.
The choices before us:
- 1. We can say no (stick to our current proposal) and make as much noise as possible in an effort to get the company to improve their proposal and to move us to Delta compensation and work rules (This can involve changing the story of labor harmony on Wall Street which is priced into the current stock price). If the company had stuck to their scope ask, everyone in the building was more than okay with going to arbitration and just waiting for our mid-contract pay adjustment.
- 2. We can stick to our most recent proposal, which means (based upon our conversations with management) we will simply go to a cost-neutral arbitration in which any gain for us has to be met with an offsetting concession. In a scorched-earth path, there is a philosophy that management will eventually give us more than cost-neutral to keep the peace, especially now that the flight attendants have voted down their TA.
- 3. We can work off the company proposal, and try to make improvements to it. We can push back on the two-hour call out for short-call, the extra year of duration, the whole-sale combining of divisions, and other provisions. The company tells us they have moves they can make if we work off their proposal.
The company is clear on the following points:
- If APA comes back with its previous proposal, the company will respond with a proffer of arbitration which APA is obligated to accept
- Once the company proffers arbitration, the company proposal passed today, with no modifications of any kind, is the proposal which will remain on the table until some point prior to arbitration.
- If APA negotiates in good faith based on the framework of todays company proposal, the company will be open to a few modifications (including small economic modifications) in order to reach a mutual agreement.
As Tom Westbrook pointed out in another thread, we must all make decisions based upon the realities of MOU paragraph 27. While those are not terms we enjoy reading, they are the terms we must live with. During the MOU negotiations, we spent nearly three weeks fighting fiercely to get a JCBA step written into the process. The two managements and the UCC wanted us to agree that the MOU and the $87 million of LOA 13-08 would be the JCBA and we would be done. The only way to get a JCBA step written into the process was to agree that if a mutual agreement was not reached, an arbitration backstop would be constrained to the same economic parameters as the MTA, and the arbitrator could not make any changes to scope.
As we are all keenly aware in this industry, things change. For everyone who argued fiercely to get a JCBA step written into the MOU, none of us would have imagined a dynamic where a $1.2 billion offer from the company would be on the table.
But things change. The discussion in closed session is how to extract the maximum value for all pilots out of our current situation in our quest to close the gap with Delta, which we all believe in our hearts that we deserve.
Contact your domicile reps with your thoughts and opinions. The decisions ahead of us are huge and the membership needs to be engaged, at least at a high level of awareness, of the major decision points in front of all of us.....including the potential outcomes if this goes to arbitration.
A Bird in Hand..........?
