Delta Air Lines will learn Friday whether its pilots agree to a new contract including pay raises that union leaders say would land them atop the industry, or if compromises made in the deal will drive them to reject it.
Under the deal, pilots would get immediate pay raises of 8 percent, followed by another 6 percent hike Jan. 1. Those would be followed by 3 percent raises in 2017 and 2018.
But to get the pay hike, the union agreed to give up some of the pilots' profit sharing.
SEE HOW MUCH PILOTS OF DIFFERENT AIRCRAFT WOULD MAKE
Some Delta pilots want greater pay increases amid the company’s billions of dollars in profits, and to make up for the concessions they agreed to during Delta’s financial struggles and bankruptcy from 2005 through 2007. Some pilots have also taken issue with increased productivity requirements and other changes to work terms.
Delta and its pilots union started the bargaining process early, with the company eager to nail down a deal quickly. Doing so can give early assurance to customers, shareholders and others, and signal Delta’s ability to continue a relatively amicable relationship with its pilots union in recent years.
A vote against the deal would signal a crack in that veneer, sending the union and management back to the bargaining table and making an ahead-of-schedule deal less likely. The pilots’ current contract runs through the end of this year.
The head of the Air Line Pilots Association at Delta, Mike Donatelli, told his members the deal would make them the highest-paid airline pilots. The deal "hits the mark for the majority of Delta pilots," he wrote in a memo. But, he acknowledged, "there were some efficiencies, some compromises."
The pilots’ online voting wraps up Friday at 2 p.m., and many expect the vote to be close. The union leadership council was itself divided when it voted 11-8 last month to pass the deal on to a vote of all pilots.
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