For big ticket purchases, pilots do have a legit concern about their buying power. But those things will normalize over longer periods of times. That just means that a pilot has to be like 95% of the rest of the population and maybe wait a year to buy the new car they want.
For daily consumable items (gas and food mostly), the $400 a month increase is easily covered by a 1% raise, let alone the hypnotical 5% raise in the United API. For a guy making $40k a year, a $400 a month increase in gas and groceries is a huge deal. For a guy making $400k (or even $150k) a year, it's not.
Ok, I'm gonna respectfully disagree... let's take a hypothetical rate, $269.46/hr. (right before the Pandemic) A top of the scale CA flying a medium jet. Run it through the 'inflation calculator' and you get: $304.32. (Today) How much longer does a average pilot making guarantee have to spend on the road to break even when it comes to spending power. There is a significant cost in time (hours flown, days on the road) to the average pilot to break even from just a few years ago. And this is also while this average pilot is watching his (tied to the overall market performance) retirement take a hit. Hopefully this hypothetical average pilot isn't retiring soon. (which - BTW... 50/50 they might be.)
As an aside, If you run this same exercise across the industry we are still playing catch up on something as simple as narrowbody pay rates from 20-40 years ago. Let alone the associated work rules that makeup a very difficult to quantify QOL equation.
Now, of course the devil is in the details and it's the work rules in combination with the rates that make for a well-rounded contract. We all know that. Even industry comparisons (CCG's) leave out many of the loopholes that allow pilots to maximize their income or time away from work. (i.e. something like 'conflict bidding' is not a line-by-line comparison item)
Any increase in my basic household expenses are a big deal. $400/month or whatever is not chump change. It represents a minimum of an additional day on the road to make up the income difference. And when the contract isn't keeping up with the inflation and still providing 'the rising tide raises all boats' benefits to future earnings and QOL then I'm looking at it as concessionary bargaining. And no carrier should be in a concessionary bargaining position right now, no matter the sob story management may be telling. Because we are in the eye of the perfect storm that we will not see again for a literal generation. (25+ years) The percentage of the total workforce of pilots that is being replaced across the industry is staggering. Smaller carriers should be leveraging that right now to the maximum effect. Because sometime between 2028-2032 that leverage will be gone as the "Big 3" will have replaced somewhere between 61% and 76% of their pilots.* *(from '18-'32, from a chart I got here on JC a few years ago)
Then, the retirements at the smaller carriers begin to peak. But this 'shortage' will be over as defined as chasing the brass ring, i.e. flying and retiring as a widebody legacy Capt for a large portion of the career. That career goal will be kicked down the road for another generation as the 'Big 3' will have already hired those pilots on their seniority lists.
Anyhoo, my point is that at a minimum we need to hold the line and still make the gains that represent our earned share of the revenue that we help create. Much of the financial woes, outside of the pandemic, can be pointed back to not reinvesting (read this as 'saving' for an inevitable downturn or economic burble) but by redirecting profit across the industry through such programs as stock buybacks. In other words, pilots aren't to blame. Nothing has changed for us in the aggregate, the same bag-of-tricks that was used on the industry post 9/11 will not work this time.
I eagerly look forward to what my United Brothers, Sisters, and Siblings have done and, like everyone, will start at Section 3 and work my way through to see how we will hopefully improve our working agreement in this environment.