motytrah

From Airline Pilots forum

According to the board it's the first time the DL pilots have rejected a DL contract. At 65% it's a pretty stunning turn of events. I actually thought it would pass by a small margin.

apolloms

great day for the DL pilots

dgilman

Any intel on the sticking points? Is the Union leadership that out of touch with the membership?

readywhenyouare

I guess the honeymoon is over. Too bad, 86 years of good management and employee relationships down the drain.

apolloms

in a nut shell, yes. It was filled with concessions in a time of record profits.

mudpuppy

In other words, DL is trying to treat its pilots like its customers?

EWR764

Profit sharing, mostly. It would have set a bad precedent for labor elsewhere in the company and at other carriers during a time of record profits. Scope (JV and DCI), sick leave and scheduling were issues too.

readywhenyouare

I could understand cutting the profit sharing since the pilot group receives a significantly higher salary than the other employee groups.

3Cforme

Pilots are the only major work group with union representation at DL. The profit sharing formula and benchmarks for other employees can be changed with nothing more than a press release.

Renes Points

And Medallions and those trying to spend $kyRubles. Fun times ahead! ^

TTT

So next steps are to come up with a new agreement I guess. They have time, however. IIRC the current contract is good for a while (a few months at least).

There seems to be a large-ish contingent looking to replace ALPA. Could this vote be an attempt to move that forward (in addition to disagreeing with the terms of the contract)?

TTT

There was a close call and lots of management/union posturing in 2006/2007 IIRC. Don't know for sure, but would be surprised if this was the first agreement that was ever rejected by the pilot group.

sleuth

According to the union, Delta's Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson has said, "Failure to ratify the agreement will lead to a very different and longer path that will not result in a better deal. Uncertainty will prevail, and that will not be good for anybody." Yahoo news

motytrah

Major sticking points, IMHO based on reading the airline pilots forum:

1) Joint Venture - DL has been out of compliance with pilots over the TATL JV. Which requires parity in terms of seats flown. DL's solution was to change to flights flown (meaning a 757 would count the same as a A380.) They also wanted to exclude VS from TALT calculation.

2) Sick Leave - DL wants the pilots to use a verification service and no longer wants to accept sick notes from minute clinics. After a pilot hits a certain number of days sick they want access to all medical records. Captains tend to skew older so there's a lot of senior guys not too thrilled about that.

3) DL wanted to reduce profit sharing in exchange for higher wages. New profit sharing calculation would take executive bonuses out before calculating employee bonuses.

4) Changes that would make it easier to have foreign entities fly with a DL livery internationally.

What I've picked up from the forum is the current contract will remain in effect. It becomes amenable in 6 months. There's also a number of so called "me-to" clauses in the current contract that would juice wages if a competitor has a pay increase.

My personal feeling, if they didn't do the sick time thing and hadn't tried to take the executive bonuses before the rank and file they would have passed the TA.

readywhenyouare

Foreign airlines flying with a DL livery? How could that possibly happen? I just don't see that working out. It's one thing to apply the livery to regional carriers since DL has a say in how those operations are run. But it would be very foolish for DL to allow a foreign airline to fly with their livery. I certainly wouldn't loan it to Air France given their less than stellar safety record.