Bob,
Major disagree. Pay is lower than DAL/SWA and now UAL. Some areas may have been closer and paid more than LCC, but those are low for other others. For the job of a network legacy, APA pilots will shortly be paid the least.
Holidays? WT# are those? WE DON'T GET A SINGLE ONE. In fact we do even the most ridiculous training on every day of the year without a dime extra including Xmas day.
Vacation? Paid less and with less accrual than most other carriers. In fact, AA's vacation can be described as worst in the industry, especially anyone with less than 21 years. only those few with 30 years have a better deal than others.
Sick time? Again compares on the lower end of all airlines. The 1113 was even more disgusting.
The only things that we were out of line with comparisons were bidding and retirement. The new PBS system will take take of those productivity isses and the retirement was whacked. After that, we are well in line in any cost comparisons with all airlines, except USAir which has it's own reasons for that pay level.
Now you go and compare your groups costs against other airlines. Let me know what you find out for yourself and other AA employee groups. I don't like what happened in the airline world regarding things like overhaul and ramp workers, it is what it is.
Our pay is 20% less than DAL and UAL, around 50% less than SWA. How far are you below those carriers "all in".
Among pilots who has Paid Holidays? Among our peer group we get much, much less than half the Holiday pay. FAs dont get holiday pay either, my guess is that you typically do not report to work five days a week 50 weeks a year and the odds that the holiday falls on your day off are much higher and that once you pass the 50% mark on the seniority list you can bid all the holidays off you want. Therefore Holiday pay probably was not much of a priority for flight crews, except in 2000 when flight crews got a bonus if they showed up on New Years-we didnt.
Vacation, we have the worst accrual in the industry at all years, the longer you are here the worse it gets. For the first five years we only get 5 vacation days per year, how many do you get? For Holidays we get paid 4 hours extra for eight hours worked, so it works out to 2 and a half extra days pay for the year if worked. So for the first 5 years our total paid time off equals seven and a half days pay. Would it be fair to say that your total vacation time is more than our Vacation and holiday time combined?
Sick time, we get 5 days while most get either 10 or 12.
I've read your contract, have you read ours?
I'm ecstatic that the Judge ruled against the company, I'm just saying that we had a better arguement against abrogation than the pilots did. We went into this at the very bottom of the industry, we were "out of line" as far as pay, benefits and work rules but not above the line, we were and are below the line and going even lower. The only things the company could point to was the pension and retiree medical which we had agreed to give up. They had nothing to make their case that the terms they had in place were onerous.
We were sold out by the TWU and their "experts" once again.
