Thanks to you each of you for your responses…
This would be a really good time for me to say that I know EXACTLY about 7.5, Dawg, because I was in ACS at the time. In fact, I was given a pink slip but saw the error in the process that local DL mgmt used to determine who stayed and who went, so I picked up the phone and went one step below the CEO – and was back on the job the next day. Not necessarily where I wanted, but I knew the rules, I knew how to play on the terms DL dictated, and I knew how to call the company on its own error.
I then went on to work for over a decade – more than two decades in total at DL- in mgmt where I hired, fired, and did countless performance evaluations. I know EXACTLY what protections DL contract and non-contract employees have.
clearly you have been gone from Delta or didn't work there before 7.5 if you think it the same Delta. (or your on some good drugs)
I was intelligent enough to leave because I wanted to do something else with my life – and I recognized, like you Glenn, that DL couldn’t deliver what I wanted so I took what the company offered and left.
My story is hardly isolated. I know few people who have gone for a career at DL w/o a run-in with the company over HR issues. But I can say without a shadow of the doubt that the vast majority of those issues are resolved far more fairly than any union ever could obtain.
… which brings us once again to the question which I will keep pounding home and that is “what proof do you have that DL employees as a whole fair any worse than those at other airlines other than to point out an intangible such as “control” which clearly doesn’t translate into the salary and benefits that ANY employee actually wants.
Dawg,
You can point out all day long how much better UA mechanics do but you have yet to show me the cost of living adjustments that show why DL employees – heavily based in the south and in lower cost of living cities than their peers at other airlines – are really not as bad off as you make them out to be. FWIW, it also explains why AA maintenance – heavily concentrated in TX and OK – is not paid at the same levels as UA.
Simple....A Delta LAX Mechanic makes less than a United Mechanic in LA. Also...Fine I don't really care about the 200 bucks....I do how ever care that they get ~3-4 more weeks off than me and lower health care cost. None of which have anything to do with COL. (and FWIW If it was as important as you make it out to be, and Delta did such a great friggin job taking care of its people, then all the hard to fill stations would be well into 6 figures.)
Those are market forces and what I have read for months from you and others is how DL is short-changing its employees yet you choose to factor in those elements like location – that just as in real estate – are huge determinants of salary. You argue that DL chooses not to expand maintenance outside of the south to avoid unions while failing to note that DL could not begin to maintain the same cost levels if it had to build maintenance facilities outside of the US SE – and your own peers here have said so as well.
er I don't think I have said a word about building outside of the southeast. Matter of fact I have noted many times ATL has tons of room for more Hangars.
I would love to see DL pick up another maintenance location or two somewhere in the US – perhaps some that NW has idled –but I am as certain as the day is long that it won’t happen unless DL can be assured long-term that it effectively compete in the global marketplace – which is the marketplace for aviation maintenance.
how about one Delta backed out of? In the SE.... Tampa is open again....and Us wide...The LAX base is still there.
If you are 3[sup]rd[/sup] generation DL, then I still have to ask you why you have expectations that you would be a unionized employee in the job you are doing?
Because when I started many years ago a union wasn't needed. Not so much now. Were you not aware that DL employees have consistently chosen not to be represented by unions, despite acquiring multiple carriers that were much more heavily unionized than DL was? Did your mother or father never tell you that DL uses flexibility throughout the company that unions at other airlines don’t allow – and they have been doing so for decades?
No my father and grandfather pointed out what a great company it was. That was before 7.5 and BK though. Its not the same company. Like it or not, Delta is no better than American or United.
If you have been around DL any length of time, then you should know that your expectation is not valid that DL will add jobs doing functions which it has already determined cannot be done profitably for the company.
unless they are forced to by organized labor...what a thought.
You might also want to acknowledge that UA mechanics, as well paid as they may be, work for the same company that still pays its pilots more than 25% less than DL pilots using the BK contract which UA imposed years ago. The likelihood that UA will increase pay for its other employees is slim to none until they raise pilot salaries- and in order to do that, they will have to spend upwards of a half billion dollars per year. In case you missed it, UA reported LESS revenue per flown seat mile in August than from a year before.... UA's revenue is shrinking while their employees are demanding higher pay - not exactly a formula for success, esp. given that UA's financial performance is well below your employers this year.
why do you keep talking about pilots? Lets try this one more time WT. Read slowly. I. Don't. give. A. Rats. a$$. about. the. Pilots. You want to talk about ALPA's failures..? find a pilot. The only thing I care about is if they hurt us....via SCOPE. Thats really about it.
What you and others refuse to acknowledge is that you participate in the JOB MARKET. All of you do jobs and have skills and qualifications that can very easily be compared with other people elsewhere in the US for people w/ the same skill set as well as elsewhere in the same location but in related jobs that use the same skill sets.
Airlines only man. Don't care about Ford, Best buy or hilton. I care about Airlines and airlines only. (you do too if it makes your point, but seem to bring up the "us market" when your proven to be wrong)
The simple fact is that airline employees have enjoyed well above average salaries for decades because of the power of unions and now market forces are eroding that advantage because unions are not able to hold back market forces.
Lol grow up. quit with the cheap shots. Unions, by way of the government....are HELPLESS in BK. Before then they were doing a pretty damn good job. (and IMO will start to build again, or airlines will be back in BK)
http://www.bls.gov/e...p_chart_001.htm
Note that this chart does not account for specialized, license specific jobs such as mechanics and pilots but it does show that many airline employees continue to earn wages above the levels they would earn in the open market.
don't care. Delta compares me to Airlines.....quit with the "be happy" horse crap. YOUR WRONG.....quit running from it.
Kev,
The promise of America is liberty and justice for all – not pay equality. That’s socialism and it doesn’t even work in countries that are truly socialist – because the free market ALWAYS manages to create a secondary labor market. The job market is based on people performing a job that others value high enough to pay them to do – and if the qualifications and uniqueness of those skills are at a premium to the market, you (collective) earn a salary at a premium to the market.
The US stands for equality of opportunity – of which you and others have had your fair share.
Or perhaps you would like to tell us what equality means and how DL is not attaining to it - and better yet how a union can be shown to do a better job of attaining it in the airline industry.
Nowhere – but nowhere – have I ever said that success is defined by the measures I use to define it. I have acknowledged that success uses the measures that each of us use.
Hopefully you won’t mind if I and others measure you against the goals you have defined – achieving labor representation.
Quitting is failing to develop the skills necessary to ensure success in the marketplace of work. Pragmatism is being willing to recognize that your goals can’t be achieved the way you thought they would… and adapting to the environment. Nowhere does pragmatism mean giving up on your goals.
Idealism – which you have in spades is commendable… but if you fail to achieve your goals, you are not much more than a dreamer.
Read again the quote I posted earlier.
The presidents judged by history to be the greatest — Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan and Wilson — were all idealists. They had a vision of America and of the world. But these men were also pragmatic politicians, men who judged that winning what’s possible is preferable to losing in fealty to an impossible dream.
In their time, each of them was denounced by their closest supporters for betraying their ideals. But they changed America.
