SWAPA Side Letter Eight
- Thread starter studlyone
- Start date
TO FUNNY! Does this mean that Airtran Pilots are not happy about how the merger is going at this point?
- Thread Starter
- #4
No evidence of a merger yet ... still working for the same crappy company as in September.
Be patient, first there was the offer, the FL stockholders just approved. AS soon as the DOJ makes their decision. THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL. Do we really think SWA will write a check to FL.
- Thread Starter
- #6
It is starting to look like SWA will write the check May 2nd.
What is a little unclear what that really means for the employees. Gary made some comments that contradict what ALPA is telling us. Fingers crossed.
What is a little unclear what that really means for the employees. Gary made some comments that contradict what ALPA is telling us. Fingers crossed.
QA4Jet-A
Veteran
BoeingBoy
Veteran
- Nov 9, 2003
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Probably nothing immediately. From a union perspective, the two sides could start the exchange/verification of seniority lists. In the next few months you'll start to see combining of facilities where appropriate, airplanes possibly being painted, etc. Probably in 4 to 6 months you'll see procedures standardized in preparation of getting both carriers on a single certificate. But the money changing hands doesn't automatically mean that things start changing the next day.
Jim
Methinks this guy is trying to pass himself off as an AirTran pilot. Some of our pilots on our union forum have reported this is occuring on other aviation forums.
- Thread Starter
- #11
@QA4jet-A,
The difference is that the phrase I quoted implies uncertainty in the implementation.
That isn't what I'm hearing from my union. Hard to just shrug off the difference when the guy talking is the new boss (hopefully not the same as the old boss!) Honestly, I don't know exactly what it means, but it is a far cry from the assurances of "bullet proof" guarantees offered by our MEC vice chair.
Still crossing my fingers.
The difference is that the phrase I quoted implies uncertainty in the implementation.
That isn't what I'm hearing from my union. Hard to just shrug off the difference when the guy talking is the new boss (hopefully not the same as the old boss!) Honestly, I don't know exactly what it means, but it is a far cry from the assurances of "bullet proof" guarantees offered by our MEC vice chair.
Still crossing my fingers.
I find that level of naivete refreshing in someone your age. (Just joking.) When in the last ten years of the airline industry have you seen or heard of union-promised, "bullet-proof guarantees" being real or even "bullet-proof for all smaller caliber weapons?" When negotiations opened 3 years ago, my union at AA (APFA) assured us that not only would we get back everything we gave in concessions in 2003, but recoupment for inflation, and real raises on top of that. Well, the company's (and the NMB's) response to that is just to stall. And, under the RLA, there's nothing we can do about it. The NMB seems to have taken on the role of protector of the airline's financial position. They could very well do the same for WN. In fact, probably would as there is now "precedent" for such actions.
Are you willing for your union to dig in its heels, and you end up with a US Airways pilots kind of situation 5 years down the road? You know...where you are making a lot less and working a lot harder than your WN counterparts, and because of the way the RLA is written, you are working under your current contract still? Think about it.
Keep in mind that when you hear Gary Kelly talking about seniority integrations, that it's within the context of ALL employee groups and not just pilots. Integrating the pilot groups is a slightly different animal than integrating the ground ops workers.
Our ground departments are structured a lot different so I expect the biggest challenge will be determining what jobs the AirTran people will slide into on the Southwest side. We don't do that "cross utilized agent" thing, and it's complicated on two levels. The first level is that we separate the upstairs and downstairs jobs. Rampers only do ramp and operations only do operations. The second complexity is that customer service is not only a different job from the other two but a whole separate department with their own union. So the AirTran people who work in that "all in one" department are going to have to at some point declare or bid themselves into these classifications. There would probably have to be 2 bids that first decide IAM or TWU (CS or Ground Ops), then an additional bid from there to filter them into specific jobs. I expect that bid to be a fairly big deal for the AirTran folks because it will determine their JOB from that day forward. Crossing over departments after the fact results in forfeiture of seniority and pay, so you stay pretty locked into your department at Southwest.
Our ground departments are structured a lot different so I expect the biggest challenge will be determining what jobs the AirTran people will slide into on the Southwest side. We don't do that "cross utilized agent" thing, and it's complicated on two levels. The first level is that we separate the upstairs and downstairs jobs. Rampers only do ramp and operations only do operations. The second complexity is that customer service is not only a different job from the other two but a whole separate department with their own union. So the AirTran people who work in that "all in one" department are going to have to at some point declare or bid themselves into these classifications. There would probably have to be 2 bids that first decide IAM or TWU (CS or Ground Ops), then an additional bid from there to filter them into specific jobs. I expect that bid to be a fairly big deal for the AirTran folks because it will determine their JOB from that day forward. Crossing over departments after the fact results in forfeiture of seniority and pay, so you stay pretty locked into your department at Southwest.
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