How is it different?:
1) You still earn the miles you fly for yourself.
2) You do have a choice not to use your miles, sit in coach or if you want biz use miles.

Think about it. Some domestic routes want thousands of dollars for their overrated biz class and yet for as little as 10K miles you can sit in FC.
I agree with you. Your miles are strictly your miles but a company is not required to fly you in biz class. Choose an airline that provides free upgrades based on status.

I also disagree with employees paying a lot extra for a ticket just for a chance of being upgraded at the airport (i.e. Delta) when they will only upgrade a certain maximum number of pax (12) and leave the rest of the FC seats empty. Paying a little more for a confirmed elite upgrade at booking is different. But that is a another issue completely.

Alaska Airlines has the EasyBiz program through which the flyer and our company get miles for a trip. AND we use the Alaska Airlines credit card to pay for the ticket. Everyone wins!

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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has its Bluebiz points. So the company gets points and the flyer gets the miles.

The way I see it,
the miles belong to the passenger and are given to them by the airline.
Some of the businesses mentioned here seem to have developed the belief that the miles belong to them and as such are a financial tool. If the company wants to reduce expenditure it would seem they look to adopt this behaviour to do so, without first using the traditional economic approaches - the ones that a probably harder for them manage.

I think many airlines are now adding their own corporate FFP to complement those of their passengers.
StarAlliance for one has it's own program. Can't remember the name of the top of my head though.

I think thats really it...
 

- our firm does require 'cheapest' for domestic flight, but 'policy' has been biz for overseas flights.
- To now essentially change that policy by suggesting econo + (my) pts to obtain biz class seating is wrong.
Furthermore, having become addicted to FT, many of those pts have been earned and increased by my extra actions...

Some one else wrote that staff threatened to walk if their pts were 'taken away' from them... I don't want to do that... but how to 'negotiate' this situation in one's favour?

Basically, it seems that your business has changed its policy of allowing employees to fly biz class internationally. Now they only pay for coach. That is their right. If it makes you feel any better, I have never worked for a business that allowed me to fly biz internationally. What I negotiated was that I did not have to work after flying all night. Basically, I said that I did not feel I should be held responsible for anything I agreed to if I was in a stupor from being in coach all night. The company agreed to send me a day early, so that I could get to the hotel, get unpacked, and get a good night's sleep before having to dance on the end of a string. Usually meant leaving Saturday night for a Monday work day, but it was worth it to me. Cost the company one extra day of hotel and food, usually about $250, instead of about $3500 extra for the biz ticket (no corporate rates).

Another possible negotiation would be for you to ask if the company would pay to buy miles for your account for biz upgrade on international redeyes. Cost of this would vary by airline. For AA (as an example), it costs $250 plus 25,000 miles. You can buy 25,000 miles for $655, so for $905 you could do the upgrade one-way, maybe they would let you expense that amount. You would still have to ride the other way in coach, but it's pretty hard to justify that as being a big hardship.

Lastly, you could estimate the number of miles you would be spending on biz upgrades, hang a value on those miles, and tell them you feel that you have just had a pay cut of that amount. Ask what in your job performance deserves a pay cut. If nothing, then ask that they increase your annual salary by that amount to make you whole. Might not work, but if handled tactfully, there should be little risk.

Well, that's good to know. As recently as 2 months ago various government agency web sites were still saying what I said.

There are companies like that? Geez... I'd imagine that if the federal government lets their employees keep miles then private companies definetely would.

Well, using that logic, should airline employees be giving a reduction in their service that is commenserate with the very real pay and pension cuts they're receiving? Me thinks not. Sometimes businesses have to do things that employees don't like. I get a kick on how hot of a topic this can be, and the same travellers turn around and tell airline employees that they don't care that they're taking massive paycuts, you still have a job to do. You guys who don't get to keep your miles still have a job to do, and if you don't like it, you can quit :) (Sorry for the rant, but as a former employee of a now defunct airline, I am sympathetic to their plight.)

I'm sorry. The other poster didn't tell me that he was a union employee in an essential industry where the government used to set prices so that no company could fail, and companies could pass along exhorbitant wages to their customers with no ill effect, and that the government had deregulated his industry, and that companies in his industry were now struggling to get wages down to a market rate that was being paid by their new start-up competitors.

I had assumed that he was a non-union employee in an unregulated industry where he was already being paid a market rate, and that getting a "Pay cut" would mean that he was now being paid a below market rate.

I also didn't say that this strategy would definitely work. Chances are it wouldn't. He asked for negotation strategies, and I provided them. Airline unions negotiate, don't they?

In view of your devastating reply to my original comment, I withdraw it.

This used to be true, however, my husband is an army officer who flies a lot for his job, and he is allowed to keep all FF miles he earns for work trips for his own use. Many years ago he was not, but this changed some time ago.

Well, those wages were AGREED to by both management and labor, no? It's no secret that a 20 year employee gets paid more than a first year employee.

So how do you determine, in real dollars, a "fair market rate?" If he got a "pay cut," he would either be receiving the new market rate, or he could find another job, no? The "market rate" is merely an illusion.

Or get their contracts thrown out in a bk proceeding. The only difference between a unionized airline employee and a non-unionized employee anywhere is that management doesn't have to wait until the company is in BK proceedings to tank your pay.

Union or no union, you are only worth what you can negotiate. The only difference with a union is that you negotiate collectively, and have a handful of people represent you at the bargaining table. The attitude around here is that airline employees should suck it up and deal, and my point was that the airline employees aren't the only ones who are seeing a cut in their compensation.

A fair market rate is one agreed to by a willing buyer and a willing seller in a free and open market. Note that not all markets are free and open. The auto industry in the fifties and sixties was not a free marketplace. Unions did "pattern bargaining", meaning that an auto company could agree to anything, as the unions would make sure that their competition paid the same rates. So the companies did agree to just about anything, and passed that above-market cost along to their customers, who needed cars.

As I said, I was assuming that the poster I was responding to was not in a situation like that. You may well be right that the market has changed since that poster was employed, and that employees in his situation are all travelling coach, and that his company was the last to require their employees to travel coach. If so, and his management knows this, he is in a remarkably poor negotiating position, and will almost surely be unsuccessful. But we don't know. Anyway, we do know what the situation of unionized airline employees in the 70s and 80s was - it was the same as the situation of unionized auto workers in the 50s and 60s. Employees were substantially overpaid, and companies were able to pass these above-market costs along to their customers because the customers had to have the product (travel) and there was a non-competitive marketplace. When deregulation introduced competition, wages had to move back to market levels. The fact that unions have been so successful in delaying this movement is the primary reason (IMO) that legacy carriers have been so unprofitable for the last 20 years.

Well, that isn't quite the only difference. An non-unionized individual employee is normally not able to threaten to shut down a company and reduce it to rubble, so the negotiating normally doesn't escalate to the Mutually Assured Destruction level that can sometimes be found in Union-Management negotiations.

Naturally, nobody likes to see a cut in their compensation. If this happens to airline unions, or any unions, we would expect that union to negotiate to try to prevent it. If the union is unable to prevent it, its members should try to accept the cut with grace. After all, what the union and its members are tacitly agreeing to is that the members have been overpaid for years, and are now receiving a market wage. Instead of being resentful, the members should congratulate themselves on their good fortune for having been overpaid in the past. If the union members believe that they are significantly underpaid, they should seek employment in another field where they can be properly compensated.

Similarly, I would expect the poster I was advising not to like a cut in his compensation. I would expect him to try to negotiate to prevent it, and I was suggesting possible middle ground positions where he could get what he wanted while his company was able to reduce its cost. As I said, if the market for his work has changed and his company knows it, he may not be successful. He should accept the situation with grace, and congratulate himself on years where he was not overpaid, but the market valued his contributions at a higher rate. If he believes that he is now significantly underpaid, he is free to seek other employment, but he has indicated that he does not wish to do this. What he should never do, however, is become bitter and angry, and take his frustrations out on his company's customers, which is what far too many airline employees have done, and continue to do to this day. I think that being on the receiving end of that bitter, angry attitude accounts for the "suck it up" attitude that you have experienced from some other Flyertalk members.

I am sorry that your former employer went under. I have had that experience also, as I suspect a lot of others on this board have. Bad things really do happen to good people. I do have an abiding faith, however, that situations that seem bad at the time are really opportunities in disguise, and that if we react with the proper attitude, things work out for the best in the end. Call me Pollyanna. :)

Federal law changed 28 December 2001!
 

Then you must be looking at some very old cached web pages. :D

See generally National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, Title XI, § 1116, Act of Dec. 28, 2001, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:pub l107.107]Pub.L. 107-107[/URL], 115 Stat. 1011, 1241, reprinted in http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+5USC5702]5 U.S.C. § 5702[/URL] note.

SEC. 1116. RETENTION OF TRAVEL PROMOTIONAL ITEMS.
Id.

One could argue that if the customers were paying prices that made the company profitable, then the prices were not above market rate and the costs were not above market rate either.

Heck, you could even say that the airline unions held that pull into the late 90's as well. But yeah, until that point, every negotiated contract comes with the mantra "parity plus" which means they want the industry average plus an X% raise on top of that. I'm well aware that may not be a financially sound demand.

To be honest, I'm not even old enough to remember Eastern going belly up. I was alive then, but too young to know what is going on. The real truth to airline unions is that unless the system is changed, the current cyclical trends will continue forever. You and I both know that if a work group/union demands a raise, they get it but the company can't afford it (and they keep getting them), then sooner or later the wages will have to drop.

The interesting thing with the union/non-union deabte is that most people here don't realize a few key details. For instance, of the most successful LCC's (WN) is also one of the most heavily unionized airlines in the industry. One of the least unionized airlines (DL) also had some of the worst losses last year. Either those are exceptions to the rule or unions aren't as big of a problem as people think.

I also believe that a large part of the airline revenue problem is that the high $$$ fares still exist, but have been diverted away from the airlines and over toward the private/corporate jet end of things. But the summary is that the employment market has yet to decide if they want a few high paying jobs or a lot of middle tier jobs.

As a non union employee, the only thing I can do is vote with my feet. If we all voted with our feet, my management would have a tough time continuing our day to day operations. My division manager doesn't have the technical knowledge to perform my job, which anybody with half a brain would classify as semi-skilled labor. But you're right -- we can't threaten to shut down the company, and the only tme they'll know it is if we walk off the job at the last minute. FWIW, I've worked in aviation for the last five years, part of it for the airlines and part of it not, and I've never been represented by a union. I'm actually neither pro nor anti union.

Well, when you said that he should ask his employer what part of his job he could cut back on to compensate for his benefit cut seemed to suggest otherwise. I made the post I did because doing that would be akin to the airline employees cutting back on their service because they're pissed off, and we all know how well that attitude is going over with the customers.

Well, I was never faced with paycuts, didn't have to deal with customers very often, and it was never an attitude I got directly from FT'ers -- but it was an attitude that I saw thrown around to my fellow FT'ers that I rarely felt was appropriate. I guess my point was that people seem to quick to blast the employees for whatever reason, but when the shoe is on the other foot, it feels a bit different.

Well, I left the company (not voluntarily) three years before it went under. Thank god I did, because $$$ (and benefits) wise, my current job is night and day better than that one. Had I waited until liquidation to leave the company, I never would have found this one. And I still work in aviation...