Agreement Reached?
- Thread starter 700UW
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WTF?? If Mesa has such a crappy contract, then why do their rates top out around $100/hr. I personally know a 700 captain that made 85k last yr. Keep the Mesa bashing up, though, it will help management in the whipsaw that will come later.
matika
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It doesn't seem possible that the pay rate could be so low...I know a captain for Trans States (that's a 50-seat ERJ) who takes home $80K a year (this from his own mouth)!
Please tell me that's some kind of mistake.
Please tell me that's some kind of mistake.
I saw on one of the threads that the 58k and 35k pay was mis-reported by the original author. They were actually the 1 year rates with incremental increases throughout the agreement. We'll just have to wait for a bit to hear the truth. 🙄
HogDriver
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The pay at MDA that everyone is talking about is 1st year Capt. pay ($57/hr) and 5th year F/O pay... which is topout ($36/hr). The rates go up each year for Capt and top out near $90-$100/ hr at year 12 I think. This is according to the Amer. Eagle contract...which I don't have a copy of yet. The real crime is we 15 year employees were supposed to go to MDA with our seniority for pay intact...which would mean we make the top rate right at the beginning...but we got chopped down to 1st year pay...no seniority credit, on the second or third round of givebacks by alpa. I can tell you the folks that are right now working at MDA are not going to sit by and allow this huge give to the company to last for ever. The cost advantage we have allowed is so big...no other carrier flying right now has an entire Capt. group flying for first year pay...it takes at least a year or two to checkout so most pilots at least go in on year 2 or 3 pay, and some carriers have a large group making top of scale pay. We will have to fight for our rightful seniority, and trying to do it right now....as US Airways struggles to get the operation even off the ground is not the time. Once, and if, MDA is operating and making money....we who have given so much...will fight to get back the rightful pay and seniority. Either that...or we will walk for greener pastures. Some pilots who have been through the entire Emb-170 training have already left for better jobs. The tide will someday turn, and if the company wants to keep expensivly trained, good quality people....they will have to react.
this post and your other earlier one about fighting the good fight and those that went before you is right on the money sir a tip of the cap to you and your professionalism.HogDriver said:
if i may be indulged for a momemt, simply put the pendulm has swung the other way before when airlines were ordering planes at the wazoo (aviation term) contacts were getting fatter (supply/demand) now post 9/11 over supply of fleet simply meant oversupply pilots (that gross oversimplification doesnt do justice to the professionals out there sorry) so the companies are taking advantage of that sometimes using the courts to help then once once falls the other hold that up as the new standard (just like on the way up pointing to other pay rates) now we have the RJs appearing to be "used" as the barging chip. you wont win the battle today but you can easily win the war tommorrow. let me venture a guess sometime in the not to distant future.......... ok you dont want to take a 20% cut again fine i (mgmt) will replace your b737 flying with an RJ it has the legs and 70seats now that we have 100 of them go ahead and strike or slow down i will just continue to replace short haul domestic flying as i wish........fast forward a bit.. what if you began negoiating your own contract seperate from mainline? fix it yourself . then went mgmt turns to you you hold the cards to be used not them.
in the mean time mainline should fear you as you are the ONLY part of the company growing getting new planes (ie growing bigger) how long will it take til MDA passes say the population of a DCA or BOS or LGA base? then your votes would out weigh them.
a classic divide and conqure technique. now mainline should be worried about that and do whatever they can to make it hospitable since one day MDA (assuming all deliveries occur) will outnumber mainline. you might just decide collectivly on a better solution then the smaller mainline group would be totally outsourced.
timline perhaps 5 years max. if they (mainline) do not help you when the time comes to support them (trust me it will) it just wont happen .
HogDriver
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Java Boy...Your points bring up my original point that we..ALPA...must totally redefine how we structure our pay and contracts as a unified UNION. Between the farming out of mainline routes to the multitude of affiliate carriers (all with their own seperate contracts and pay scales), and the drastic pay difference between the few heavy earners and the rest on the bottom....the profession will be divided and conqured step by step. Unfortunately...the mainline guys have ignored the plight of the regionals until they became the big guy on the block. Now we have rediculesly low paid pilots struggling in a longterm job, not a stepping stone...and they are taking mainline routes by the score. A national unified campaign by ALPA to create a fair climbing pay scale from small props to RJs to mainline, would be a much needed start. Leveling out the top scales with the bottom ones would take away the amuntition companies have to use one group to undercut the other. Can this be done? I don't know...past ALPA practice is not incouraging. But there are great incentives for the Union to act like a real union. There is the law suit by express pilots at Delta, claiming ALPA treated them like second class pilots compared to Mainline...and in my view they are absolutly right. We need to transform thinking...a pilot is a pilot is a pilot. There should not be airline pilots earning less than 20K...flying the same skies in jets as pilots earning 280k. Are there plumbers who get a buck and a half an hour in a union, while others make 30? No. A standard is set to pay for those skills...are there some differences for master plumbers and such? Sure....the market still plays some here. But our current situation...basically a pay pyrimid...with the few lucky ones on top getting all the goodies...and the mass at the bottom getting crumbs is just plane wrong...and will do nothing but erode the entire profession.
