Does Delta still have NWA scabs working?

[WorldTraveler]

that is all hypothetical so it really isn't worth debating other than to note DL had that same freedom in 2005-7 and yet fewer DL employees were cut (35%) in BK than at any other legacy carrier in their BKs, DL employee salaries fell less during BK, and DL employees have regained more of their salary post BK than have the employees at any other airline.

The union supporters don't seem to grasp that airlines (and other companies) that have been thru BK once and know their industry is vulnerable to downturns - as the airlines are - do all they can to make sure they don't go back into BK again.
It is precisely because DL is non-union in most job categories and it has the most cooperative relationship w/ its pilots of any of the network carriers that DL has the confidence it can adapt and ensure that it wont' end up in BK again.

There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands that want a union but the rules require a majority - and so far, that has not happened in any large workgroup in the 80 plus years DL has been around, even though there have been a number of elections.

You can talk about hypothetical situations but history is far more predictive of what is likely to happen, esp. given that DL employees as a group make more than their legacy/network peers than at any time since deregulation and thus the economic justification for unions is just not there.

 

[WorldTraveler]

As much as I don't want to sound like an apologist for substandard CBAs, it is true that each of these carriers went through c11 once, if not twice, and each of these CBAs still lack a lot of what took decades to bargain for. While the hourly rates may not be what DL is paying, they all include scope(kind of a big deal), a grievance procedure, and some have medical premiums a lot less than what DL employees pay.

and yet all of those contracts were amended w/o the influence of labor in a few minutes in court.... what protection is that.

DL employees will staff airport operations in more places in just a few months when all of the "negotiated" agreements at AA/US and UA are implemented - and w/o unions. Where is the power of scope?

DL FAs have gained more flying as DL has taken it back from foreign bases... where has that happened at AA and UA?

DL employees have gained more w/o a union than their peers at their legacy/peers have w/ unions... you can argue the point til the cows come home but DL employees see the truth which is why they don't see a need to have unions "protecting" them....

You can also argue that B6 and WN are in the same type of business but they are fundamentally different businesses... for US and UA employees who lost their pensions when their companies walked away from the obligations, you might have a point since many of the legacy costs were abandoned in BK. But DL still pays $600-750 million per year to maintain its pension plans and they have said they will increase their contributions to strengthen their balance sheet... WN and B6 have no such obligations. Do you realize that the network airlines have hundreds of thousands of employees for whom they provide post-retirement pension and health benefits, even if their current employees don't earn it anymore? B6 and WN have nothing of the sort.
Most employees have absolutely no sense of how much benefits actually cost and how much bigger part of the equation they are than the basic hourly salary. It is those benefits which make a huge difference in the type of business plan each airline has and also distinguishes the legacy airlines from those that are half the age, or far less in the case of B6.

 

[robbedagain]

lets use EN (piedmont airlines the express for us) for yrs they were non union... i know bec i was with them for a short time and there were 2 card drives both were very very close but did not pass the third time was the charm..
but to the dl I know a number of them at my station currently and they want a union... fedex is largely non union but they do pay well ups pays well their union wn pays well but theyre union i still think the time is coming before we see the f/as go union at dl and the rampers too

 

[robbedagain]

aa did not lose their pensions they froze them and if memory recalls dl and nwa froze theirs us and ua lost theirs in the ch11 b6 and wn i think are good comparisons and wn has a 401k not sure about b6

 

[WorldTraveler]

I did not list AA as one of the carriers that has dumped their pensions; they will indeed have to make pension payments of $500 million per year or more... which dramatically changes their business plan compared to going into BK.

Defined pension plans rarely exist at younger companies.. .that is precisely why there is a difference in the business plan for carriers like B6 and WN and the legacy carriers.
Investors and companies themselves do not want the obligation to provide a benefit years after the employee has earned it; that is why they pay into a 401K and are done - and there is no expectation that they will provide health care benefits after you leave the company. The legacy carriers still have that repsonsiblity for hundreds of thousands of current and former employees while newer carriers do not.

Labor has been saying for decades that they would organize DL employees but have not succeeded, including after the NW merger in which about 40% of the combined workforce was already in a union.

There is no economic reason to think that DL employees are likely to choose a union - and union membership is an economic decision.

 

[xUT]

PBGC inherits Delta pilot pensions as 6th largest claim

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has become the trustee for the pension plan of Delta Air Lines pilots, whose account shortfall of about $3 billion makes it the sixth-largest claim in the PBGC's history.
The PBGC, the federal guarantor of pension benefits, said it expects to be liable for about $920 million of the underfunded amount. The Delta Airlines Inc. Pilots Retirement Plan, which the PBGC took over on Dec. 31, has $1.7 billion in assets and $4.7 billion in benefit liabilities.
Pension benefits are owed to more than 13,000 active and retired pilots.

So much for that argument.
B) xUT

 

[robbedagain]

wt wn has been around for a long time though not as long as say dl aa us and ua but theyve been around long enough since deregulation but you did mention carriers in general and therefore i took it as all legacy yes aa dl and nwa had their pensions frozen but where is the 500 million they would have to fork over and when would that start?

think its time to do a sep thread as this one is well beyond the course

 

[700UW]

Guess WT doesnt understand Section 1113 C.

 

[WorldTraveler]

Guess WT doesnt understand Section 1113 C.

I understand it quite well... no one can realistically call it negotiations when the company can go into court asking for what it wants and end up w/ the vast majority of that list.in
If you believe that 1113C is an effective way to achieve the outcomes for union members, there isn't a soul that would want you representing them.

Robbed,

Congress voted to help airlines that were in BK by spreading out their pension obligations in return for those airlines not terminating their pensions. At the time, DL and NW benefitted but AA does as well. The PBGC doesn't want the pensions and if the PBGC has to take too many pensions, it could fail and end up requiring a bailout from the US government which is why Congress is interested in helping airlines not terminate pensions.

Contributions to the frozen plans began the year DL and NW exited BK and AA will likely do the same thing.

Here is the text from DL's annual report to stockholders and the SEC:

Pension Contributions. We sponsor defined benefit pension plans for eligible employees and retirees. These plans are closed to new entrants and are frozen for future benefit accruals. Our funding obligations for these plans are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, as modified by the The Pension Protection Act of 2006. We contributed $697 million and $598 million to our defined benefit pension plans during 2012 and 2011, respectively. We estimate the funding requirements under these plans will total approximately $675 million in 2013.

DL recently said that it will contribute $1 billion more to its pension plans over the next couple years in addition to their obligations above.

Yes, we know that PMDL pilot plans were terminated and not frozen; PMNW pilot pensions were frozen because they did not have the lump sum payout that made the DL pilot pension plan unsustainable. DL pilots received about $2B in stock in the new Delta which is also why the companies and creditors don't want to terminate plans if possible because it dilutes the recovery for those seeking claims.
A large reason AA's creditors will end up w/ better recovery is because AA will be the first large airline since the 2000s that has not terminated a pension plan and thus had large liabilities.

 

[blue collar]

Maybe you're right, Delta probably is the best managed legacy/network airline headquartered in ATL. I also find that great companies (like DL) don't use their own industry for comparison of vacation time allotted for employees, they compare it to all US industry. So yeah, they get a lot of time off compared to McDonald's. Can't believe I didn't see that before! Thanks for helping open my eyes. Can't believe I passed up on working for such a great company

 

[WorldTraveler]

you should familiarize yourself with data available from the US Dept. of Labor - Bureau of Labor Statistics.

They have data representing over 100 million working Americans, hardly a small subset of fast food employees and all of the data is sliced dozens of different ways in order to accurately determine how well a company or even an individual compares with its peers.

http://www.bls.gov/bls/wages.htm


If DL employees felt they were being short-changed on pay and benefits, they would be rushing for the union halls if that were to provide a viable solution.... but since that hasn't happened, either union supporters have a vastly inflated view of what they actually contribute or else rank and file Americans just aren't getting the message.

Either way, the labor movement has a lot of work to do.

 

[blue collar]

Like I said. Whatever suits your argument... I got my exercise running laps with your circular arguments.

 

[Kev3188]

There is no economic reason to think that DL employees are likely to choose a union - and union membership is an economic decision.

...Except when it isn't...

 

[WorldTraveler]

...Except when it isn't...

and I genuinely respect that for some people, the equation is more heavily balanced in favor of QOL and non-economic issues than it is for economic issues but that is honestly true for a minority of people. The vast majority of people want to maximize their earnings first and then deal w/ the QOL issues within a range of normal that exists within benefits at other American companies.

It is because DL's benefits - including paid lunch and time off for the most senior employees - are within the range of what is offered within general American industry as a whole (and that statement is born out by DOL/BTS stats) that DL employees consider their benefits package "acceptable" even if it isn't industry topping like at other airlines. But those other airlines have lower pay or numbers of employees in a comparable work group.

Consider also that no other employees in the industry have received the same level of pay raises and profit sharing payouts over the past few years and it becomes all the more clear that the economic issues are indeed far more beneficial for DL employees under their system than it is for unionized employees. There is no guarantee that DL employees would have received the same economic improvements and thus there would be no reason to believe the focus would now shift to QOL issues if those economic successes had not been achieved.

 

[Kev3188]

and I genuinely respect that for some people, the equation is more heavily balanced in favor of QOL and non-economic issues than it is for economic issues but that is honestly true for a minority of people.

It's more balanced than you think.

People wanting to maximize their earnings goes with out saying.

It is because DL's benefits - including paid lunch and time off for the most senior employees

We don't have a paid lunch. That was taken away from us, and you spared no word count defending it.

Accrued vacation doesn't mean much if you're unable to use it, and that doesn't even touch on the (IMO) theft of our accrued sick and OJI balances...