MEC CODE-A-PHONE UPDATE
September 21, 2007
This is Richard Obermeyer with a US Airways MEC update for Friday, September 21st, with four new items.
Item 1. The MEC held a special conference call meeting this afternoon. This meeting lasted approximately four hours. The MEC spent this time discussing various strategies for moving forward both in achieving pay parity and protecting the AAA pilots from the
devastating effects of the Nicolau award. The resolutions passed during this conference call meeting will be posted on the pilots’ only web site. The MEC decided to convene a special meeting on Monday to continue these strategy discussions.
Item 2. For those of you unfamiliar with the SAP procedures, the Scheduling Committee has provided a copy of the SAP manual on the pilots’ only web site. Simply go to the web site and look under Committees/Central Scheduling Committee, then scroll down to the SAP section where you will find the SAP manual in PDF format.
Additionally, you may find it helpful to review Section 25©3 of the contract for more Schedule Adjustment Period (SAP) information. If you no longer have a hard copy of the contract, it too can be found on the pilots only web site under Contracts and LOAs in the MEC Fast-Links on the left hand side of the home page.
LOA 93 negatively impacted and modified one element of SAP. That change consists of the following: “The SAP floor will remain 15 hours below the applicable pay cap. For example, a pay cap increase to 95:00 will cause the SAP floor to increase to 80:00. The SAP floor for pilots on the 75-Hour Option shall be 60:00.â€
Remember that you can adjust the min SAP floor by the amount of positive bank you have. For example a 95-hour pay cap would result in an 80-hour SAP floor. If you have 15 hours positive bank, you can adjust your min SAP floor down to 65 hours. To accomplish this, simply adjust your min floor in the lower right hand side of your Unit 1 SAP screen by overtyping the indicated floor value with an adjusted amount based on the positive bank you have, as indicated in the upper right portion of the Option 45 (SAP) screen.
For those of you who missed it, the November cap for the PHL 76I and 330 has been changed to 85.
If you still need help, please don’t hesitate to contact one of the Scheduling Committee members for more information. Their contact information is on the pilots’ only website in the MEC Directory under the Fast-Links and in the US AIRWAVES gray pages.
Remember that November Sap bidding opens September 21st and closes September 26th. At the recent MEC Quarterly Meeting, the MEC passed a resolution recognizing that US Airways pilots have faced multiple sequential months of 95 hour pay caps and 5 hour flexes for the majority of 2007 and that the amount of time away from home that is required to fly such monthly schedules creates extreme hardships on our families. Since holiday months are traditionally time spent with family and friends, the MEC has designated November 2007 as “SAP Awareness Month" so as to offer some relief from the hardships placed on the pilots' families. During November’s "SAP Awareness Month 2007,†the US Airways MEC members, officers, committee members and all ALPA members on AFB status, will limit their scheduled hours to the minimum allowed through SAP and any other legal means.
Item 3. September 27th will mark two full years since the US Airways/America West merger. Since that time, US Airways management has not only generously helped themselves to the spoils that our sacrifices have provided them, they have made sure that most other employee groups have received pay raises and pay parity to the higher pay levels of either East or West. Two years later, although management has the financial resources that were produced by our enormous concessions--we are still waiting.
No matter where you stand on many of our daunting issues, if you believe in the Equal Pay for Equal Work concept and if you have had enough of the treatment East pilots receive while everyone else benefits from our investment, then join us for a pilot-wide picketing event on Thursday, September 27th, our two year anniversary, at the Reagan National Airport. Picketing will be held from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. A flyer with all the details, including the assembly point and time, has been posted on the pilots’ only website under What's New and has also been emailed to all pilots.
Item 4. Given the employee-management relations here at US Airways and the fact that many of our furloughed pilots have refused to come back on property, we thought it would be helpful to provide job opportunity information to all our pilots. A pilot job fair is being held on September 22nd in Washington, DC, at the Hyatt Regency Reston Hotel. There will be 35-plus airlines that will be attending and pilots will be able to meet recruiters, hand out resumes. Specific hiring information for each airline can be found on our web site under What's New.
News you can use:
W.A.R. Item 917
FOM
Warning: Do not attempt to land from an unstabilized approach. The decision to go around is not an indication of poor performance, but rather good judgment.
Educate to Vacate
Below is a link to a video recording of a PHX pilot meeting with Parker on February 6, 2007. This video is posted on both the AWA and AAA Pilot’s company web sites as is all the other meetings that Parker held with employees. Parker's consistent message which has never changed, was that AWA would be in bankruptcy and would have down sized and taken pay cuts absent the merger with US Airways and that the merger was mutually beneficial for both companies.
See Story
Equal pay for Equal Work:
It has been 21 days since September 1, 2007, the start of retro active pay.
Money to be paid to each Group 2 Captain is $1125
Money to be paid to each Group 2 First Officer is $552
Pilots on all other aircraft will receive the same percentage increase as Group 2 Pilots (approximately 15%).
Follow the three-prong approach, fly safe and thanks for listening.
He ain't even close. I think he started drinking again.
