TheStig wrote: ↑Sat May 26, 2018 9:24 amThe airline will have a pretty easy time arguing to the arbitrator that rock bottom wages are required to compete in this market, and that it won't result in any job loses and better yet First Officers will be able to gain upgrades. As you mentioned the exact same script as rouge.gonnabeapilot wrote: ↑Sat May 26, 2018 8:27 am I think the devil's in the details on this one. I have yet to see any piece of communication that Westjet pilots will be flying Swoop aircraft at Westjet wages. Given this whole thing kicked off because Westjet wanted pilots to take 2 year leaves of absences to go fly for Swoop making next to nothing can it really be considered a victory if after all this it just ends up being Westjet pilots bidding back and forth to Swoop and flying Rouge style on B scale wages that closely resemble the company's initial wage offer for Swoop?
Hopefully it's a short term deal which will allow the members to fill out committees, hold elections and find areas which they most feel need to urgently be addressed.
Overall I imagine this is a huge relief to most westjetters, those who were actually prepared to strike in order to achieve an industry leading contract will be disappointed, as that no longer going to happen, as will those on the outside who didn't stand to lose anything from a strike or lockout. It's a shame that things took this long only to end up in from of an arbitrator, but at least the process has and will usher out the door any manager/executive who is unable to perform their duties under a revised union/company relationship.
This is basically all conjecture and has no merit.
Only items that haven’t already been agreed upon and won’t be final by the end of negotiations will go to an arbitrator. Rumour has it that a lot of gains have been made however there are a lot of details that have yet to emerge.
For WJ pilots this isn’t just about a $$ per hour increase. There are many things going on here, Swoop/RIGs/perdiems/YOS just to name a few.
We also cannot forget that this is a first contract for a newly unionized workforce within a company that doesn't like dealing with unions. There will be gains, there will also be a loss here and there but all in all it will be a positive outcome.