Railroad Union Strike Threat Kneecapped by Biden

[WeAAsles]

I didn't want to "port" my butt to any other job after I got into NW either, but that's the difference between our generation and everyone coming up behind us.

And organizing is about leaving the place a little better than you found it, right? Any successful campaign will go in with that mindset.

+1
That inheritability is a huge benefit that often gets lost in these conversations.

Not only do they convince people to stay, but they can convince people to act against their best interests.

*Pay cut? Sure. Gotta save the pension!
*Outsource work? You bet. We gotta save the pension!
*Terrible medical? So be it. As long as we save the pension!



Who said anything about it being a "main" retirement? Come to think of it, who's still stuck in the "work 30-40 years in one spot, retire to Florida, and run out the clock" model?

And let's not forget that if someone decides they want to retire to something new, some plans won't let you collect.

You, maybe more than anyone on this board, know the risk of having a DBP as a "main" vehicle.

Kev can you accept that not everyone thinks like you and trying to bludgeon someone into accepting what you think is universal gospel is also a huge turnoff?

We (AA) gave concessions in 2003 with the caveat to keep our Pensions as an ongoing entity. 2 years later the rest of the industry that hadn’t gone Bankrupt used that tool and took away any Industry Pensions that were left. And they also knocked wages and benefits below what I was earning with also keeping my Pension.

Due to that decision today I’m in a very decent position as far as retirement.

My argument has always been one that you seem to have a problem with, “personal choice” ……. If someone wants a Pension they should be able to have one, if someone wants that money funneled into a 401k instead they should also have that “CHOICE”

The unsuccessful campaigns are the ones that aren’t going to argue for some choice. Although again in our Class and Craft for young people (Mainly only High School Graduates) they could give a rats ass about the subject.

 

[WeAAsles]

BTW Kev that $1000 a Month Pension I have is almost enough alone to live in Costa Rica or Panama if that’s the direction I “choose” to take. My 401K will supplement anything more I should need. And Social Security being hit at 70 will be gravy.

 

[Kev3188]

We (AA) gave concessions in 2003 with the caveat to keep our Pensions as an ongoing entity.

Exactly.

Now imagine that same scenario except w/o AA having that leverage over you all.

 

[WeAAsles]

Exactly.

Now imagine that same scenario except w/o AA having that leverage over you all.

The same leverage was there either way. The AA Unions were obviously well aware of the horror stories of the employees of Braniff, Eastern, Pan Am, and TWA. Airline Deregulation was designed to decimate all the Legacy carriers costs to make flying more affordable to Main Street USA. And no employee group either Union or non Union didn’t get their knees whacked.

Our Pensions were not the only thing we wanted to save BTW.

 

[WeAAsles]

Exactly.

Now imagine that same scenario except w/o AA having that leverage over you all.

And AMFA at NWA can stake its claim to be the only Union not to concede and cry Uncle during all the bloodbaths but at the end of the day they still jumped into the deep end and drowned. The only survivors were the ones who chose not to jump in that water in the first place.

 

[La Li Lu Le Lo]

Young people want pay now.

Who doesn't?

What’s holding people back and making it difficult for the Airlines to keep them is that stupid 12 year payscale.

It's not just stupid. It's RIDICULOUSLY stupid.

Thank your UNION for bringing it to the membership and the membership for being greedy and stupid enough to vote for it.

Change that scale to 8 or 9 years and turnover will dramatically drop.

8 or 9 years is just as stupid as 12. I stated before that is almost 20 percent of most people's careers (say 20 to 65).

Hell my nephew made VP at a bank by the time he was 30. That is certainly far from where he started (a teller at a window).

The scale really needs to be about 5 years.

I know a whole shop with a large percentage of people who benefitted from top out for a whole...... 2 years (thank you Junior Fleet Service) before they shut the shop down after working 20% of their working lives getting there. That was at a 9 year scale. Airline bankruptcies being as prevalent as they are who even knows if you will get that top out pay?

You have something seriously wrong with your perception if you think investing 9 years to get to get to the upper end of the pay scale for a position is normal. That is NOT normal.

 

[WeAAsles]

Who doesn't?

It's not just stupid. It's RIDICULOUSLY stupid.

Thank your UNION for bringing it to the membership and the membership for being greedy and stupid enough to vote for it.


8 or 9 years is just as stupid as 12. I stated before that is almost 20 percent of most people's careers (say 20 to 65).

Hell my nephew made VP at a bank by the time he was 30. That is certainly far from where he started (a teller at a window).

The scale really needs to be about 5 years.

I know a whole shop with a large percentage of people who benefitted from top out for a whole...... 2 years (thank you Junior Fleet Service) before they shut the shop down after working 20% of their working lives getting there. That was at a 9 year scale. Airline bankruptcies being as prevalent as they are who even knows if you will get that top out pay?

You have something seriously wrong with your perception if you think investing 9 years to get to get to the upper end of the pay scale for a position is normal. That is NOT normal.

Tell that to all the Industry Pilots groups who also have at least 12 year pay scales. The entire Industry in all groups have pay scales and none of them are 5 years. Neither is the majority of the Rail Industry as well.

You really don’t understand our Industry and should move on.

Delta Pilots

 

[WeAAsles]

More Pilot pay scales.

 

[La Li Lu Le Lo]

Tell that to all the Industry Pilots groups who also have at least 12 year pay scales. The entire Industry in all groups have pay scales and none of them are 5 years. Neither is the majority of the Rail Industry as well.

You really don’t understand our Industry and should move on.

Delta Pilots

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Just because it is wide spread in the airline business does not mean it is normality WeAAsles.

I will say it again..... 12 years to top out is NOT the normal.

Just because the Airlines offered perks to current employees to throw low seniority and new employees under the bus to accept a ridiculous pay scale does not make it normal. It only means the membership is greedy and self serving enough to let them get away with it.

I don't need to understand the airline business. I understand the membership. Those sorry bastards will sell out anyone if they think they can get something out of it. It's "Pull together win together.... unless there is something in it for ME". That has ALWAYS been the TWU way.

Junior Fleet Service should hit close enough to home for you to acknowledge there is history of fellow employees sticking "future peers" with a B scale.

That is what 12 years is..... it's the pilot version of a B scale. The people already in don't care because it does not affect them. They already got "theirs".

 

[WeAAsles]

Just because it is wide spread in the airline business does not mean it is normality WeAAsles.

I will say it again..... 12 years to top out is NOT the normal.

Just because the Airlines offered perks to current employees to throw low seniority and new employees under the bus to accept a ridiculous pay scale does not make it normal. It only means the membership is greedy and self serving enough to let them get away with it.

I don't need to understand the airline business. I understand the membership. Those sorry bastards will sell out anyone if they think they can get something out of it. It's "Pull together win together.... unless there is something in it for ME". That has ALWAYS been the TWU way.

Junior Fleet Service should hit close enough to home for you to acknowledge there is history of fellow employees sticking "future peers" with a B scale.

That is what 12 years is..... it's the pilot version of a B scale. The people already in don't care because it does not affect them. They already got "theirs".

Junior Fleet Service started 27 years ago and ended 22 years ago. Eric doesn’t even know who Bozo is. You need to move on. You ARE obsessed.

 

[Kev3188]

My argument has always been one that you seem to have a problem with, “personal choice” ……. If someone wants a Pension they should be able to have one, if someone wants that money funneled into a 401k instead they should also have that “CHOICE”

That's great on paper, but companies use that sort of thing to pit employees against one another.

The scale really needs to be about 5 years.

+1

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.

 

[WeAAsles]

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.

 

[WeAAsles]

Among union workers, 91 percent had access to a retirement plan. That compares with 65 percent of nonunion workers. Union workers were more likely than nonunion workers to have access to defined benefit retirement plans. Thirty percent of union workers had only a defined benefit retirement plan, and another 34 percent had both defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Among nonunion workers, 1 percent had only a defined benefit retirement plan, and another 10 percent had both defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Fifty-four percent of nonunion workers had access only to a defined contribution plan, compared with 27 percent of union workers.

Full-time workers were more likely than part-time workers to have access to any type of retirement plan. Workers in establishments with 100 or more workers were more likely than those in smaller establishments to have access to any type of retirement plan.

Among workers with the highest 25 percent of wages, 88 percent had access to any type of retirement plan. That compares with 42 percent of workers whose wages were among the lowest 25 percent.

67 percent of private industry workers had access to retirement plans in 2020 : The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Sixty-seven percent of private industry workers had access to employer-provided retirement plans in March 2020. Fifty-two percent had access only to defined contribution retirement plans. An additional 12 percent had access to both defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans, while...

www.bls.gov

 

[La Li Lu Le Lo]

Junior Fleet Service started 27 years ago and ended 22 years ago. Eric doesn’t even know who Bozo is. You need to move on. You ARE obsessed.

Junior Fleet Service may have ended 22 years ago but the B-Scale never did.

12 years IS the new B-Scale WeAAsles.

That's what you don't seem to be getting.

The membership saddled low seniority and employees to be with a ridiculous pay scale because it served their purpose at the time.

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.

What makes you think your labor is worth so much more than theirs?

You need a reality check. You don't work a complex job requiring an education or years of training, you work an entry level labor job that anybody can learn to do in a month's time. I know, I've done it. At any rate they damn sure would be trained as well as you in 5 years.

I see the TWU strategy of cultivating narcissism is not wasted on you. I mean it has to be narcissism. I don't know what else could explain why you think someone should put in 12 years to earn top pay in a non skilled entry level job.

If you have an explanation or justification as to why your labor is worth so much more, other than "I have time on the clock" I would love to hear it.

You certainly don't bring any value to the job that any able bodied person with a high school education off the street can offer with minimal training.

 

[WeAAsles]

Junior Fleet Service may have ended 22 years ago but the B-Scale never did.

12 years IS the new B-Scale WeAAsles.

That's what you don't seem to be getting.

The membership saddled low seniority and employees to be with a ridiculous pay scale because it served their purpose at the time.


What makes you think your labor is worth so much more than theirs?

You need a reality check. You don't work a complex job requiring an education or years of training, you work an entry level labor job that anybody can learn to do in a month's time. I know, I've done it. At any rate they damn sure would be trained as well as you in 5 years.

I see the TWU strategy of cultivating narcissism is not wasted on you. I mean it has to be narcissism. I don't know what else could explain why you think someone should put in 12 years to earn top pay in a non skilled entry level job.

If you have an explanation or justification as to why your labor is worth so much more, other than "I have time on the clock" I would love to hear it.

You certainly don't bring any value to the job that any able bodied person with a high school education off the street can offer with minimal training.

Don’t really care what you think. You’re some guy on the outside looking in and you’ll never be in any of my labor negotiations. Do you want to repeat how great you have it on the outside again though? But if you really are so concerned about the 12 year scales for us poor little Airline workers you can write some letters to all the Airline CEO’s since they’re the ones who pushed for it in every workgroup from the Pilots on down.

You should also tell them your story of how you got screwed again too. I’m sure they’ll address your grievances with a response. Maybe even bring you back?