Originally Posted by
27/09
I might be wrong but I think the looking across the ditch comment was more about the LWOP option, so far as I'm aware that cannot be arbitrarily applied by a company over here.
I'm sure the pilots would be allowed to have a vote on taking 60% of their current salary. So far as i know there's nothing stopping that, in fact they could also have a vote on taking LWOP.
We could vote on a 90% Pay Cut... of course it likely wouldn't pass, but we can vote on it!
What the company cannot do is force it on us, or forcefully stand us down.
I cannot understand why the Severance was turned down, and Forans explanation made zero sense. The company have stated anyone whose severance is greater than 20 weeks would have it paid fortnightly. Those 40+ 777 Captains could either be sitting at home getting their severance paid fortnightly and be off the payroll in 6-12 months, or sitting at home doing nothing, also getting paid fortnightly (-14%), but remaining on the payroll until retirement and subject to down-training + super + licence/medical costs etc
The package offered by the Company was woefully inadequate.
As InZed said, massive down-training will be a nightmare. Especially because everyone to be down-trained is required to be offered both a Longual and Short Haul position. It's only the most Junior Pilots who wont get a choice and be directed to whats left. So there is definitely potential for a lot of Pilots to be on bypass pay so the company can keep them on a Boeing (or Airbus) for minimal training. SIM training is easy, it's the line-training with minimal flying that will cause the problems. The number of sectors required for a seat change on your current fleet is minimal compared to swapping types... especially between Boeing and Airbus.
Pilot costs, especially after the loss of IP, Allowances, Hotels, Crew Transport, Redundancies and the 14% cut are such a small component of the total bill, I suspect their attention will be turned to offloading assets such as property (as they've already mentioned) before they come after us again. I could be wrong, but we could all work for free and it wouldn't really make a difference.