Retirement - Split from Hiring

[600RVR]

Raymond Hall,

Well Raymond I guess if you get your way, it will be YOU and your group that myself and many others get to thank for the layoff. After all of us enduring 2 years of flat pay some almost losing their house and put into financial hardship (I think thats what your group is calling it), and to be faced by a layoff which is even worse than flat pay. My wife and kids and hunderds more I'm sure will give you the same thanks as me. Can't wait to shake your hand along with the rest thats on the list.


Thank you
600RVR

With the upmost respect

[skygodd]

Ray,

Have you told your supporters that the promise of big coin is very unlikely? The actuary on the stand at the CHRT proved that former Capt Kelly can only claim damages of less than $2,000!!!! Ouch, not exactly what he has been promised, is it?

The promises of big settlements are those of pipe dreams. More likely is that if you are fit then you should return to work as an RP or EMJ FO. If not, no pension because now the retirement age is 80. How 'bout dem apples?

sg

[skygodd]

Tactics Land3, tactics....

Any former union leader would know that if they are losing a case they need to:

1. divide and conquer the opposition
2. establish doubt
3. create a false deadline
4. repeat above over and over.....

These are obvious tactics of desperation.

sg

[accumulous]

Does anybody have some clarification on the other Airline policies - for example:

Other airlines seem to be able to deal with these issues like adults, not juveniles, and arrive at fairly comprehensive agreements to everybody's benefit in very short order.

Jazz has been going past 60 since about 2002 and so has WestJet (not sure if that was the exact year of change for them) but we heard that the WestJet policy was that you go in the left seat until you're 65 and then you do a couple of sims to get right seat qualified and carry on past 65 as F/O. Anybody know if that is how the Jazz policy works??

Also there is apparently no age restriction at Transport Canada itself so could either Jazz or Westjet have Pilots in Command past 65 if they were on Domestic Ops only??

In the case of the USA when they dumped the 60 rule it hit the President's desk in mid-December 2007 and two weeks later it was in effect. How did they effect the change in a 2 week period???

[Mechanic787]

Here are some frank questions that nobody appears to have addressed. Maybe some of you can go at them:

1. How much are all of you guys paying the lawyers to fight this mess? Seriously. How much is each group paying in legal fees to continute this litigation? Annually? To date, since 2006?

2. What are the hidden costs, including the supplemental costs of having all the additional lawyers as well as the non-legal support staff at the hearing? Who are they, how much have you paid them to sit there or to be on standby for litigation-related work, should their contribution be required? Seriously...do those costs exceed the costs of legal counsel?

3. If the complainants lose these cases, is there a financial price tag attached?

4. If ACPA loses, what is the financial downside? Never mind the pie-in-the sky rhetoric about blah, blah, blah. Assuming your worst nightmare, what is the highest potential bill? And if it is in the millions, where is the money going to come from to pay the bill?

5. How many levels of appeal will you guys be taking, before this gets sorted out, for once and for all, and how much will those appeals cost? And finally,

6. If the Tribunal orders reinstatement and/or a rescinding of the mandatory provisions in the collective agreement, what is your best guess for when that change might take place? Before summer, or two to three years from now?

From what I have seen of litigation in other areas, nobody seems to get a real handle on the true costs of litigation until they are forced to write some fairly large cheques. Will that be the case here?

[skygodd]

WestJet and Jazz? Apples and Oranges

WJ has one type and no pension. Jazz has a pension but status pay. The US folks lost their pensions after 9/11.

AC has 5 aircraft types, a $130K pension and pay based on career progression. Just plain different.

The bad behaviour we see is mostly from the +60 crowd using the tactics I pointed out above due to their desperate frustration. ACPU on the other hand has been surprisingly quiet.

sg

[accumulous]

"WestJet and Jazz? Apples and Oranges"

Actually it's got nothing whatsoever to do with fruit. Fruit is not mentioned anywhere in any of the recent rulings. Not in the age of hiring case, not in the height case, not in the gender case, not in the vision case, not in this case. It's fundamental Human Rights. Parliament. Charter. Law. Anybody can try to spin it in any direction they want to spin it but when the top stops spinning it still says fundamental Human Rights. All you have to do is look at the rulings. No apples, no oranges, no grapes, no bananas, just Human Rights. You can't tell a black guy he can't fly, you can't tell an oriental guy he can't fly, you can't tell a white guy he can't fly, you can't tell a short guy he can't fly, you can't tell a girl she can't fly, you can't tell a girl who wears glasses she can't fly, you can't tell a girl who's older than you she can't fly. You can plow ten million into a lawyer and tell him to tell a court that a girl who's older than you can't fly but it's all been covered in Parliament, and just provides the lawyer with the Mercedes he takes your case to court in. At the end of the day you still can't discriminate against people. You'd think most people's parents would have already told them that.

Just asking the question regarding the WestJet thing and the age 65+ issue. They apparently go to 65 in the left seat and then beyond 65 in the right seat - so does anybody know if in fact PIC is permitted in transport ops beyond 65 if the operation is domestic only?? Same with Jazz - do they slide to the right seat after 65??

[TyrellCorp]

Geoge Vilven will be reinstated, and will operate as a First Officer, notwithstanding the fact that he will turn 67 in August.

Would he be willing to come back as an Embraer FO? Under the current EMJ pay scale?

[Say Altitude]

Removed because I should know better.

SA

[Raymond Hall]

Ray,

Notwithstanding your stand with respect to flying past 60, or whether or not you feel it is a violation of your "rights", I must comment on your conduct during this whole debacle.

Spank me. Censure me. Ostracize me. Hate me. Congratulations on your feel-good, irrelevant outpouring. Make I suggest an analogy? The puck is in your end zone while you and your defencemen are all involved in a childish brawl down at the other end of the rink!

You have a problem that has absolutely nothing to do with me and my group. You and your union simply refuse to get your collective minds around the fact that your actions, not mine, are illegal, and that those actions will be stopped; if you don’t change your direction soon, the actions will be stopped at great expense to you.

Within a very short time, your union will be reinstating my right to access and participate on the ACPA Forum (just take my word for it, for now, it won’t be voluntary, but it will happen, because taking retributive action against me by removing my right of access to the Forum in itself violates two separate sections of the Canadian Human Rights Act, one civil (Section 14.1), and one criminal (Section 59)). I cautioned the MEC Chair about these statutory provisions before the decision to remove my rights of access was confirmed, but that caution was ignored.

Now, if you were properly informed by your ACPA representatives about the facts, you would have known that my suspension from your Forum was not for copying and pasting text from the posts there, but from a statement that I made, in properly filed legal pleadings in litigation with your union that expressed only an “intention” to produce evidence from the Forum. At the point of the suspension of my right of access, nothing had been actually copied. Did you know that?

Further, within a very short time, my employment will be reinstated with full seniority rights in the position that I left as a B777 Captain, and your union and your employer will be paying me (and many, many other pilots) damages for the illegal actions that have been taken against me and my colleagues. I cautioned both Air Canada and ACPA four years ago to not do this—they didn’t take me seriously, just as you don’t take me seriously today.

Regarding my alleged “attempt to infiltrate an MEC meeting,” who has been feeding you with that misinformation? Go get your facts straight, please, and if you still want to attack me, at least attack me an allegation that has some merit in fact.

Last, do you really think your misguided slander of my motivation, integrity, or incorrectly interpreted actions bears any influence on anything relevant to either what I am doing here, or to how this entire issue will play out? If so, you give yourself too much credit. As I have said many, many times before, this is not about me or you. Your attempt to ignore, deny or frustrate the law of the land will only cause you grief, and slandering those who speak the truth is a delusion that you will eventually have to deal with—unfortunately the longer you delay that reconciliation, the more expensive it will be for you.

[accumulous]

Out of the top 2300 or so on the AC seniority list, only a little over 500 of those will have enough years of service due to their age of hiring to receive anything close to a full pension. In other words, about 1,800 of those will not. That's one thousand eight hundred will not. Of that 1,800 in the top 2300, about half of those pilots will be way, way, way, way, way out of the big numbers, like not even remotely close. Of the next 1000 names on the list, almost all of them will be way, way, way, way, out of the numbers. Something like at least 80 percent of all the pilots on the list will not come close to max pension by virtue of the advanced hiring ages. A staggering number were hired in their mid to late thirties and well into their forties. Roughly 2,700 pilots will not get there. That's two thousand, seven hundred. Anybody with even half an ounce of common sense can see the benefits of open retirement. It appears to have taken WestJet and Jazz and every other airline in the world about 2 nanoseconds to figure it out. Sure the old musical chairs merry-go-round says that every individual guy would like to have his or her very own ass suspended over the chair when the music stops, but the music already stopped and somebody else's ass was over the chair. When the music stopped, there could only possibly have been 1 person out of 3300 with their ass over the chair, and 3299 with their asses not over the chair. The 3299 pilots who did not have their asses over the chair should be thankful they are being handed an open-ended, open retirement career on a silver plate and should stop blowing millions and writing essays on forums and maybe see a good psychiatrist or something and spend the time looking at ways to take advantage of a massive opportunity to advance their careers.

[pilotbzh]

should have full pension after 25years, not base on best 5 years either but a fix income for all (130K sound good). no more race to the top same pension for flying a 777 or 767 If you don't like it make extra cash on the 777 and top up your own retirement....
Simple isn't it.... some could even leave before 60 once they have they 25 years. take a contract job and start collecting at 60, few will have to stay past 60 and could work on pension buy back so they would'nt have to. We can't force them to retire at 60 but help them reach that goal.
Most pilot hired are in they 30s now some early 40s, not like it use to be with the majority in they early 20s...

[TyrellCorp]

Geoge Vilven will be reinstated, and will operate as a First Officer, notwithstanding the fact that he will turn 67 in August.

Would he be willing to come back as an Embraer FO? Under the current EMJ pay scale?

Raymond Hall, you still haven't answered my question. I put it out there again.

For most of us, the problem is not you staying on, but the effect it will have on progression. Most in your group seem to want no change in this regard and want to keep hogging the "sweet spot" at the expense of those that they will be taking advantage of. You all got to that sweet spot based on said progression. If you are willing to work out a fair solution WRT progression, then I'm sure all this would be done with.

[TyrellCorp]

Lost in Saigon, let me tell you what it looks like from my perspective. It seems that the fly past 60 group like to use "The chance to work this out with a "Fair Solution" has long past....." as an excuse to avoid the the issue. Are you saying that at one point you would have actually been willing to work out a FAIR solution? What's wrong with bottom of the list or RP? With years of service in pay progression of course.
All that aside, what's wrong with starting from scratch and working out a FAIR and workable solution that doesn't punish the junior ranks. It means we all probably have to give a little and yes that means from your end as well. We have to share the pain just as much as we share the gain. Interested?

[600RVR]

So Raymond

Whats your best guess for your return, And my layoff? bet you can't come up with a date. If this goes through they'll use the August 2009 date for return, and if I can remember you retired early last summer. Remember your using the US as a example and they said as of this date you can stay, before it too bad. So i guess you'll be SOL just like me with no job. Oh ya did I say thanks.

600RVR

[Unable]

So Ray, can you not just retire from AC and be happy with your phenomenal career and excellent pension. Did you not benefit in your pay and lifestyle by the many that retired ahead of you at age 60. I'm just trying to understand. Do enlighten me if enlightening is needed.

Unable