Regional Elite to be dissolved into DGS
 

Following up from the ironic other thread on the topic from earlier this week:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...nal-elite.html

Delta today announced that Regional Elite is going away and that a majority of its staff will more than likely be dissolved into Delta's other handling company, Delta Global Services.


Thoughts? This is probably a huge blow to DL's workforce, and I imagine there's going to be a mass exodus as DGS employees do not get the same NRSA benefits that REAS employees did.

Interesting to consider if there are net positive or negative financial ramifications for this action...

A quick look at glass door and it's pretty grim looking situation. Most of the feedback from employees can be summed up with

If I had to guess, Delta is going to use "well you can work for DGS!" in lieu of an appropriate severance. I hope that they at least are eligible for unemployment assistance.

I work ramp for REAS at MSP. Apologies if your experience at DTW was lacking, but lets face it, DTW sucks.

Current morale at MSP has hit an all time low. Word is that we will be DGS employees by November, which is disappointing, considering that DGS flight benefits are terrible.

I am wondering what happened, especially since we all received profit sharing checks a couple weeks ago for meeting our performance goals. Seemed like a lot of good things were happening with REAS winning bids on other stations.

Mainly I am angry about our flight benefits degrading. There are some full time employees here, I don't know what will happen to them if they start over at day 1 on the pay scale. All part time employees have day jobs and work at REAS only for flight benefits and we shall see if it is enough to keep people from quitting. Limited flight days, flying s3cr on DCI and no ZEDs is a joke.

That was a big part of the problem. REAS actually LOST most of the RFP's up for bid recently on stations. They won very few. Stated reason is that costs were too high..now i dont know how true that is, but it's what the company put out in a press release.

Yeah, I would have gladly not received some meager bonus if that would have kept us from not being absorbed in to DGS.

I have read that airlines do this occasionally to reduce legacy costs and those HR costs are what the VP has said in the past were the largest chuck of REAS's overhead. Quite a few people were topped out on the pay scale on day one that REAS was created. I am guessing this is why REAS is closing.

Well it finally hit the papers...

http://www.ajc.com/business/delta-sh...l-1495331.html

Sad part is that the top end of the pay scale isnt exactly a ton of money.

The article states Regional Elite has no employees in Georgia. Is this true? Regional Elite's website shows it servicing Columbus, GA and Augusta, GA. Just curious if there are going to be changes at CSG.

That part of the article stuck out to me as well. When I was in and out of AGS often (mostly last year) RE employees were there. Maybe they lost that contact recently?

Well, I suppose that article will be true in a few months, since there will be no REAS and thus no REAS employees in GA.

At MSP we start at 8.50/hr and top out at 10/hr after a few years. There are some employees from the old XJ days, but the most senior guy at MSP has 25 years under his belt and makes 14/hr, IIRC. Even those guys aren't getting rich. Maybe some of the problem is that we are always understaffed, so there is always a bit of overtime available and if those guys get it, REAS is paying out a bit more than what a normal employee would be getting to fill it.

I had lunch with the SVP once, he said that the main overhead for REAS was HR related: wages & benefits. REAS had one amazing thing going for them that I don't see other suppliers have: part-time flex scheduling + good flight benefits (depending how you look at it). Part time flex employees worked at most 36 hours per pay period and retained full flight benefits, but with none of the other benefits (health, retirement, pension, etc). Some schedules were 4 hour shifts, 4 days per week, maybe a 12 hour day and a 4 hour shift and other schedules were every other weekend.

Most of these people have day jobs else where and are just there to fly. Some of my coworkers were originally from overseas, made well over 100k annually and would use the benefits so they could take their family back home several times per year.

I believe that they should have axed full time employees all together and gone solely with the part time flex model. Corporate had 3 years to get their house in order, so I squarely place the blame on them.

But then what do you do for managers/supervisors, etc?

Of note, the Regional Elite website is now mostly dead. You get a landing page, and the only link available is to apply for a job there (which seems counterproductive?)

I should have clarified, PTF is only for agents. All managers, supervisors and administration staff are full time. Which makes sense, that really is the only career option for what they pay.

I contacted the article's author and she said she noticed the same thing but "new numbers" she got from Delta showed differently. You are probably correct that they recently lost the contract.