There were several negative comments in the March 1 Citizen Free Speech section regarding the Delta pilots. First a quick math lesson for the author of the second pilot comment.
Anytime you increase something by a certain percentage and then decrease that result by a similar percentage, you do not end up at the starting point. A quick dramatic example: Start with 100 dollars, widgets, shares or whatever. Increase by 100 percent thereby resulting in 200. Now decrease that result by 100 percent. You’re not back to 100, but at 0.
Now let’s use the author’s “facts.” Start with 100 dollars. Apply a 34 percent raise in 2000 resulting in 134. Add the short-lived 5 percent raise, and you get 140.70. Now apply the 32.5 percent pay cut in 2004 which results in 94.97. Then add the recent 14 percent cut and you end up with 81.67. That’s a lot different than “approximately a 6 percent pay cut since 2000” as the author contends. Now add the extra 5 percent cut the company wants and you’re down to 77.58. Yeah, I’d be ecstatic to be earning the pre-2000 rates, too.
All of these cuts are to basic pay rates and do not include all the other concessions in vacation, training, international and night pay, per diem, scheduling, etc. And that’s still not enough for the company. It wants to basically gut the contract and terminate the pension plan.
It’s not a matter of greed; it’s a matter of saying enough is enough. I’d be happy to give more concessions on pay and contract items if 1) management used those concessions intelligently and 2) there was some sort of snap back on the concessions during a recovery.
Management’s bone-headed actions in the recent past (stock buy-back, SERPs, selling fuel hedges, high-cost RJs that passengers hate, etc.) don’t offer much hope for 1) above and 2) does not appear to be part of the company’s so-called “negotiations.”
The problem isn’t between pilots and the rest of the employees. The problem is between management and the employees. We could have outsourced our management to the gorilla section of the Atlanta Zoo and fared better the past few years.
Ken Morris
Peachtree City, Ga.