I can absolutely point fingers - they think of themselves as major airline pilots but failed to secure one thing, their own job protections. While air group buys shinny new jets and has no requirement for "mainline" to fly them. A previous MEC officer, who's now in management, said straight to my face, "I don't see why guys think scope is so important".
He had come into our recurrent class and I about fell out of my chair. How out of touch can you be?!
Fair enough but it's what they deemed important themselves and apparently it wasn't scope. Most of their pilot group lives in base and the contract reflects exactly that. Up until the E175s showed up, Horizon had CR7s for a while (all parked) and turboprops. Now the expansion at the Alaska regionals has really taken of but it wasn't like that before. It's served as a wakeup call and most of them are on board with getting scope.
VX was absolutely not perfect, BUT it had a lot of things that were better and weren't even negotiated - 24 hour layover credit, 2+ more days off per month, PBS, double the profit sharing $$, better hotels, and the list goes on. I talk to a lot of guys who said they made more money under VX than they do with AS - we have lost a lot of soft time and productivity. That wasn't even with a contract but a lousy PRB.
How long have you been here?! Profit share didn't come until literally very recently, which you know, meant we made some money. We lost millions and barely even made it. Maybe you weren't around long enough to see our VX Employee company holding share of 15% (which was going to be cashed out for IPO) literally be oblierated to 1%. IPO payouts that were suppose to be in the tens of thousands ended up being absolute crap. Mine was $1,200 and it was a complete joke. Had it not been for what they did, everyone should have gotten about 15x what they got. But the company basically did an 'internal' bankruptcy and re-aligned the internal company holding percentages and screwed the employee holding.
As for the rest, you do realize we are STILL under the PRB as far as scheduling rules go, right? The only thing we've lost so far is the incentive pay above 80 hrs and holiday pay. Everything else including the things you mentioned is still intact. We get our days off, PBS, hotels. I'd like to meet these people who say they made more money under VX than they do with AS - they sound like they are clueless because we are still under the same scheduling rules. The only soft time and productivity we've lost so far is holiday pay and incentive pay. It sounds like you believe we're fully under AS's contract but we are not. It'll take time to cut us over but for the time being much remains the same including most of the things you said.
The Alaska guys have decades of negotiation history that culminated in the turd they have. They are not peers of DL, UA. WN, or AA - those have pulled so far ahead in work rules it's not even close.
They are a legacy airline by all definitions. Their contract isn't perfect, they got hosed in arbitration with Kasher, and have voted away parts of their own contracts. No one is denying it. The reality is their mindset is a live-in-base pilot mindset and when you drive to work like that, it leads to many pro-company guys who just don't get affected much by scheduling rules, changes, etc. Now that we're combined with many commuters, the entire mindset will change for the future going forward.
Half pay for dead heads? Come on.
What are you talking about? VX pays 50% for deadheads. AS pays 100%. Come on, read up what was in the PRB versus what's in the AS contract! Sheesh
A lot of big surprises about them where revealed when the curtain finally got pulled back and it's a very disappointing. ExpressJet had a contract that is leaps and bounds better than Alaska's, and I think most regionals do nowadays.
The whole regional contract comparison is a fallacy type argument. I'm sure XJT had some great things in their contract. But it's still a regional, with regional instability, and flying that will go poof! and make a contract worthless.
Now what are we going to do about it? Don't ever go to arbitration again, hope to hell the combined VX & AS folks outnumber their SEA/PDX company types, and volunteer for the union to try and make this place better. But it doesn't absolve those guys who thought management would abide by handshake agreements and we should just take what we get.
Until the current contract is changed and we get a new contract, the merger arbitration language is still in there. We don't have a choice on that unless management agrees to open Section 1 right now and get it modified. If say we buy jetBlue in the next couple years then the same TPA process and JCBA process would ensue including the arbitration portion. Anyway, I agree that a lot of their pilots have been cozy for far too long and it's time for a change going forward.
