robbedagain said:
southwind, just my own opin.. PS can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing good as long as the company posts profits WN is a prime example
bad when the companies lose money like the stretch of yrs that occurred at the majors prior to the merger
But me I would rather have a increase in wages over PS any day bec it does not take a whole lot for a company to post a loss due to variety of reasons whereas in a contract and despite money losses Id still have the higher take home wages vs no PS
I agree that profit sharing isn't something you should rely on and yes, it can vary depending on the company's fortunes. That said, I continue to believe that it's stupid beyond belief to trade it away for percentage pay raises. In year one, that's not called a pay raise - that's called a "concession." That pay raise was bought by giving up something that could turn out to be very valuable in the future.
Competent unions (IMO) should spend some more time educating their members that they intend to negotiate pay raises WITHOUT giving up what could be a very lucrative bonus arrangement. Competent unions should be able to get both: pay raises and preserve the profit sharing.
The common response to that is this: but if the company enters a losing streak and produces no profits, it's better to have the guaranteed pay raises instead." That refrain always leaves out the obvious: If the employer loses money several years in a row, the next step is Ch 11 bankruptcy, where the employer demands (and always gets) huge wage and benefit concessions. If your employer is making billions of dollars in profits, then you want to share in those capitalistic excesses. And if your employer isn't making billions of dollars in profits, then you are probably not going to get to keep your measly raises that you got for trading away your profit sharing.
Typically, unions resist giving up gains that they achieved in prior contracts, as it's very difficult to get them back. Work rules are one example. So is profit sharing. For a short time, AA's employees had (before the APA pilots foolishly traded it away) 15% first dollar profit sharing. And unbelievably, there were APA pilots bitching about profit sharing in December when they were voting on their new contract - as in "where is our profit sharing now that AA is making billions?" You gave it away, fools.
Pay raises are a great idea, but not when you have to buy them by giving up other parts of your contract. Unions typically don't like cost-neutral contracts, but when you trade away profit sharing for fixed raises, management calls that a "victory" and pops the champagne corks. I realize you work for US, and you've had half a lifetime of being beaten down and having your expectations lowered and working under bankruptcy concession contracts, but your employer now makes more money each year than USAir earned in all of its years of existence. If DL's employees are getting an extra 8 weeks of pay because of its huge profits, AA's employees should be getting the same.
