Company's proposal kills cruisers

[buzz]

Just to add a little more to Don's post --

I'll go from appx $100/hr as a 6 yr 340 cruiser, to the small jet f/o salary capped at 4 yrs according to the company manifesto. The same doc says the 12 yr small jet f/o will be $50/hr, so that gives me about $40/hr I guess.

That's a 60% reduction even before you count in the myriad other "gives" in after tax expenses/per diems and working conditions. And before the downgrade....likely to the street.

I think I'll start honing my backhoe resume.

My current job sucks.

[Guest in_the_sky]

The Job is great...The company that management screwed up now sucks.

[Guest in_the_sky]

The job is great...the company we work for now sucks thanks to Air Canada's blackbelt management.

[Guest GDR]

It's unfortunate that we still carry on negotiating the way we do.

Once we were in the position of being under CCAA protection we should have started a discussion with the Judge, the monitor, the company and the unions and determined the percentage of payroll that was going to have to be saved to make this a viable operation long term.

Having determined how much has to come out of the contract then the union and the company should have sat down, and gone over the contract clause by clause as many times as necessary until sufficient changes were made to reach the magic figure..

The company knew before they came up with any proposal that they would only get a part of it. As a result they put out a wish list of everything that they could think of with the idea that if you throw enough mud at the wall then some of it will stick.

It's the system that we seem to be locked into and nobody seems to be willing to do anything about it. ACPA and Ray Hall had a go at it a couple of years ago but nothing came of it. Possibly it is because the company has an industrial relations dep't that is worried about the risk of negotiating in a different way, or maybe it’s just because any other way will break down and we just wind up doing the same old thing anyway. I hope the latter isn’t the case or things will never change.

It's a shame because it means that any time there is a negotiation it winds up being us and them, and as a result we get employees feeling the way buzz does. We have in most cases good employees and in most cases good managers but this confrontational system of negotiations causes us to break off into our own camps with tribal warfare being the end result.

Greg Robinson

[Par88]

Buzz is always quick to point out that the decline in airline pay/working conditions started with deregulation. He has never pointed to corporate greed as a reason why we continually take it on the chin. You have all seen our load factors.....20 years ago we would have been making a killing but this is a different industry. We must all adapt and start posting profits before any further gains will be made. Anything less will only lead to further decline.

[Par88]

Sorry....I was refering to Buzz Hargrove, CAW.

[Don Hudson]

Par88;

Re " . . . but this is a different industry. "

Yes...in fact it is a different work-world entirely.

What we're witnessing in this long process is simply a transfer of "wealth" from employees to others, and in the Enron/Worldcom/Global Crossing/Adelphia/Kmart cases, billions of dollars vanished completely including over $1 billion in Enron pension funds alone. But this is a far bigger process than one measly Ken Lay and his "appropriated" millions, or even about the new left-wing buzzword, 'corporate greed'. This is a process which began about a century ago and in earnest about 30 years ago. Maximum plucking of the goose with minimum hissing is not only a talent of the government.

The present dire "local" circumstances are certainly real enough and so are the consequences of not coming to the table prepared to give at the office, but there is a history and a story in all this. None of this occurred in a vacuum, nor do these approaches to employees exist without antecedents.

And you are right; these organizations have to begin posting profits again, but like selling the furniture, transferring negotiated wages and benefits "over to the asset column" is only short-term optics. The cash-flow and the business has to be there. That is where our management and we as employees need to put our focus and our energies, especially here at Air Canada where the next six months will be critical as we emerge from CCAA.

Don

BTW, Hargrove is right about de-regulation and its disastrous effects on this industry, and I'll bet anyone that, with the exception of seat-filling fares which are not the norm, air travel is not nearly as cheap as de-reg's supporters will claim. But "de-regulation" does not exist alone nor did it emerge on its own. It is part of a neoliberal approach to economics, but that is another very long rabbit trail.