That's great on paper, but companies use that sort of thing to pit employees against one another.
No they don’t. Where are your examples? Companies have a set amount they look to negotiate on our pay and benefits. Not counting overtime they don’t care how we choose to divide that pie. Ex: Lower pay, lower medical costs.
At AA TWU has a 401k 5% Contribution 4% Match. IAM has their IAMPF plus a 4% Match. The IAMPF has a cap that the Company pays into that’s I believe $1600 per year. My Contribution can go past that cap and I can receive more. But the IAM also gets lower medical so the two contributions are basically a wash in total value compensation.
You just have an understandable personal hatred towards the Pension because you got burned by it. But Millions of Americans are collecting a Pension right now and are doing just fine. AA retirees who left prior to 2012 haven’t lost a single penny. I (technically) didn’t lose anything either because I gained what was owed to me up until the freeze and then the Company just replaced where they deposited my retirement contributions.
They shifted their responsibilities towards managing my retirement solely onto my shoulders. Here’s the money, now beat it. Hell I even have to pay fees for the management of my 401k through Fidelity. I didn’t have to do that with my Pension.
Oh and back to that portability line. You haven’t ported yourself any more than I have. You and I are comfortable where we are and we didn’t look and don’t want to go anywhere else. When my career is over it will be about 35 years and because you started much younger yours will be likely 45 years. Obviously since we’re both doing it it’s something we want or like.
NW's used to be 5. It's not unreasonable. Except if one carrier has a 5 year scale and another has 12, then it becomes a CASM disadvantage (unless you're hiring nonstop and/or expanding). Once the B-scale was introduced, the genie was out of the bottle.
Now's probably the best time (at least in my career) to fix that.
Getting back to 5 in any foreseeable amount of time absolutely is unrealistic. 5 year payscales were over 30 + years ago. When I hired on at AA in 1995 the scale was 9 years. Not counting the Junior Fleet the scale remained at 9 years all the way up to our merger when Management offered us very nice raises but with the caveat that we go from 9 to 12 years. It was acceptable btw because the pay on all levels was well above what it would have been had it remained at 9. Those not at TOS had 3 more years tacked onto their time. (I topped out in 8 because on the signing of our 2001 contract they brought me up by 1 year)
The rest of the Industry is what pulled us up at AA to 12 years. Now how do we look at starting to reverse that and what’s honestly both reasonable and realistic.
Your scale is now at 10 1/2. So that something we shoot for. From there over time reasonable would be (imo) getting it back down to 9 years. Fa La is right about one thing. We who are now so high at TOS have those below us to thank. The lower we get those scales you can guarantee the lower the top will again be because that’s a huge cost to our companies. And we have to get our customers to foot that bill as well.
Because the Pilots are all signing off on 12 year deals I don’t see the push to go lower happening soon. They seem to be fine signing off on 12. What I do see is those scales being closer in wages. Starting pay could get up to $22 $23 with TOS at $35 to $37? So the differences get squeezed.
What they could do but it would all just be psychological anyway. Have the base pay be $22 $23 and have a longevity scale of $1.00 per year that maxes out at $35 after 12 years. Of course that’s where dumb people would fall for the illusion that there isn’t a disparity.
But if anyone really thinks that a new hire deserves to earn $85,000 right out of the gate then they’re smoking some really dopey weed I have to say. I don’t subscribe to the “me me me I want it now” Veruca Salt Generation.
