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[Light Years]

Just how much less can you pay a b-scaler?

For flight attendants, the b-scalers are dieing fast- you go to A scale (more like B+ nowadays) at the beginning of your sixth year, and the most junior is 99 seniority. If I'm figuring right, with the current work group, there will be no B-scale f/as active after 2005. Are they recalling or extending b-scale for a longer period? Is the 30% the folks who are active? That 30% will probably either quit or stick around with some very bad morale, and rightfully so.

I still have never gotten a good explanation as to why they cant do early retirements for those who are topped out and willing, and bring back juniors who are cheap and willing. Dont take delivery of a couple RJs and let a bunch of seniors bow out with some dignity, bring down your employee costs.

 

[tadjr]

Doing the early outs would require a hit in costs this year, but given the amount of pay and other benefits (health care/vacation/sick time) vs what a new hire would be, how long would it take to actually start recovering some of the initial money lost by a payout this year? You'd go (for agents) from $20/hr to $8? or so, 4 weeks less vacation or more, plus you could do CARS, which is the plan anyway, just do it faster. I know they dont want to spend the $ right now, but I would love to see a comparison of the cost of a buyout today vs what the company would be saving 2 years from now with replacements (as opposed to more paycuts for everyone). Excluding management of course. :blink:

 

[wwiiairliner]

The confirmation came from the top management...

 

[SVQLBA]

how about ..early outs..for the older folks

other than death................

I've often questioned why this wasn't the first course of action, particularly given the seniority of the U workforce. Of course, there are significant upfront costs with offering early retirement incentives. Perhaps, CCY decided it just didn't have enough money to make it work.

Personally, I believe early retirement options are the best way to reduce the size of a workforce - labor costs go down, costs of health care benefits go down, sick time should go down, in some of these cases there are meaningful increases in productivity, and you cut costs over the long haul without destroying morale.

FedEx has just done this (offering early outs) very successfully. See last week's Q3 results and the commentary in the press. There is a an upfront non-cash charge that the company has to take to follow the accounting rules (basically it covers the increased payout stream ahead compared to the planned retirement pay out streams) but such a move is immediately cash positive for the company -- instead of paying someone full salary/wages and benefits you start paying them retirement salary and benefits. Even if these are boosted to make early out attractive, you have to be ridiciulously generous to prevent this being cash positive for the company. FedEx Express got IIRC a 60% boost in margins Q over Q because of this.

Charge and reported earnings vs. cash -- lots of people get confused on this and lose sight of what will benefit a company.

 

[tadjr]

Just doing a quick jot of numbers (very nonaccurate given all the variables), but for an agent, they could offer an early buyout with partial payment and hire a new person to replace them and for 1 year be at the same place as this year $ wise, but next year, the drop would be significant.
Current agent top out base $20.05 newhire $9.52 saving per hour 10.53 X 40 hours/week x 52 weeks = 21902 that they could use to offer as a buyout number this year. Hire a replacement at $9.52 and not cost anything vs keeping the current topped out employee. Next year that would be a savings of that much.

or

Replacement with CARS
20.05 newhire CAR $8.63 savings per hour $11.42 x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks = $23754 for a buyout.

I know not everyone would take this and leave since its not a full years pay, but there are quite a few teetering that would take this lump sum and run to the bank.

What would the negatives be with offering this type of plan?

 

[ITRADE]

Immediate cash outlay.

 

[Light Years]

Anyone have similar numbers for Inflight?

 

[TailSpin]

All of these numbers make sense, except for one minor detail. How many of the thousands that are laid-off will replace those who take early retirement are already at TOS? Why would the company buy out an agent only to replace him with another agent who will be making the same amount per hour?

The formula is great, it's reality that bites.

 

[MarkMyWords]

The confirmation came from the top management...

Name? Title? A way to verify?

if you ask me.....smells like FUD to me.

 

[insp89]

Smells like "fertilizer" to me, and it's getting deeper by the minute. .......Also, you have 2 choices, { Seniority or Suction,} Seniority, while FAR from perfect, is no doubt better than NEPOTISM, BROWN-NOSING, the BUDDY,BUDDY system, CLIQUES, etc....

 

[etops1]

The confirmation came from the top management...

thats total bs!! . stop spreading idiotic rumors!! give us a name of whom told you this crap!! must have gotten confirmation from drunk man!!!! ##@@%&$$#@@!!!!!!!!! :angry:

 

[4merresrat]

You are seriously dreaming if you think they would offer early outs. A company that is on the verge of demise surely has not thought or motivation to offer attractive packages to get people out the door. Come on lets get real.

 

[wwiiairliner]

It really does not matter what the source of the information is. "BS" you said, my friend, the concessions are coming one way or another, one format or other; Tomorrow, David will have a good laugh after telling us why the flight attendant who's making $40,000 a year is the reason why we are going bankrupt again. The question is how fast these guys will destroy our company. These guys don't give a damn about any of the employees. They are here, because, they are the last losers our incompetent board could find out to run the business. I say it's time for all the employees to take things in charge. It's our future at stake here. Tomorrow, these guys will try to divide us, and then get the concession they need….We have to stick together if we want to get out of this mess…

 

[mweiss]

Im speaking just from mechanics point of view...Who would get to review me?

Hmmm. I didn't realize that you have that many that you work with in a short period of time. How many would you say you work with in six months?

Perhaps it's not workable on the scale of your organization. That would be most unfortunate.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

I've been fortunate (or unfortunate) to work under both systems - straight seniority here and everything from no seniority to date of hire seniority at my earlier employer.

That earlier employer was a small freight carrier (6 DC-3's). At various times we had date of hire seniority, seniority by seat, and no seniority. Many times, captains were hired off the street.

One such captain was good friends with the Director of Operations - they had worked together for several years previously. Unfortunately, he had that condition (what's it name?) where he couldn't stay awake - he would fall asleep between the ramp and the runway. Since he was the DO's friend, he was untouchable - complaints fell on deaf ears.

Admittedly, that experience was undoubtedly an extreme. But oft-times, those making the evaluations are not the ones that have to pick up the slack of the lazy or incompetent. They just have to make sure that the slack is picked up.

Jim