The current "offer" from the Company for salaries has new Captains (
after 1July 2012) starting on $186k. That is level one of a 10 step salary scale. All the steps are 3%, so probably not keeping up with CPI and less than the 190k
VB Captains will be on as of
1 July 2011. So what that would translate to is that a new 777 Captain will never get paid as much as a current 737 Captain. I would suggest that meets most criteria for a B Scale.
You are quite correct in stating that this is still under negotiation, and additionally the pilots, as well as the unions, have made it clear to the company that such an offer will be voted down.
Nevertheless, the company is currently offering a
"B Scale" for want of a better term.
If we were to hypothesise and take the worst case that it got voted up, because CRFO's have been offered a reasonable increase, and they make up 50% of the voting pilots, then the next step by the Co will be to waive that under the noses of
VB pilots and say 777 Captains are on 186k, therefore a new 737 Captain will have to be less than that. And so the downward pressure would continue.
The good news is that it appears most of the CRFO's can see that short term gain will be a serious long term loss for them, and everyone else. So I don't have any real concerns about the current offer being voted up by anyone.