“If you look at the demographics of the base we have about 65% commuters in Newark. Of those 65% there are about rough justice [sic] 200 commuters from Houston to Newark. And if you are going to have a reduction, we didn’t want to force people out of Houston to backfill people that would be reduced here potentially…It’s to try to reduce some commuters…It’s an easier commute, more flights, better weather and fewer delays.” - Captain Fred Abbott, Newark Pilot Meeting, August 12, 2009
Today is Thursday, September 24, 2009 and there are 10 items for discussion.
Item 1: 2010 Vacation Bidding Opens: BID IT ALL!
Vacation bidding for 2010 opens this week and it provides us with a unique ability to show our unity to management. Imagine their angst when they look at 100% or our pilots bidding 100% of their 2010 vacation entitlement and realizing they need more pilots. It’s a beautiful thing.
Remember that you must declare how many weeks of your vacation you intend to bid during the very first, or PRIMARY bid. Hint: the correct declaration would be all of it.
You senior guys, be the hero of all the junior guys by bidding all 42 days of your entitlement. You junior guys, be the hero of your family as you use your vacation to do the yard work that piled up during all of your rolled days off.
Item 2: Management Out of Ideas; Falls Back on the Only Playbook They Have
It must be fab to be a ceo: hundreds of employees falling at your feet throwing rose petals, millions in cash and prizes, the certain knowledge that you are master of all you see. Then along come some pilots to screw it all up for you.
Last week at the Houston ceo exchange, Mr Kellner and Mr. Smisek hosted an object lesson in Union Busting 101 using the same tired play from the same tired original edition playbook. Honestly, we must ask why our board of directors is paying these guys so much money to be so completely unoriginal.
The lesson: turning the rest of the employees against the latest unionized group to be in contract negotiations. Until we sign our next contract—which will, of course, make us all friends and honored colleagues again, at least during the signing ceremony—this is one we’ll see repeatedly in various forms, from grandstanding orations designed to show the rubes that the pilots are meaningless in the venti-scheme of ceo-things, to the shopworn “greedy pilot letter” sent to all employees reminding them that if the pilots get what they want, everyone else’s kids will starve and be forced into child labor and the family dog will have to be spit-roasted so everyone can eat.
One of our pilots cornered the ceo’s:
“Mr. Kellner, you have always been a supporter and a proponent of maintaining the funding for the lump sum option for the pilots “A” plan retirement as a contractual obligation, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Mr. Kellner quickly replied. Actually, he was one of the architects of the freezing of our “A” fund and the resulting decimation, but…
Our pilot then asked, “Mr. Smisek, as the incoming ceo, are you prepared to make the same commitment to your pilots? Are you willing to publicly state that unequivocally you are committed to funding the A-Fund lump sum option as a contractual requirement?”
Mr. Smisek, relying upon his years of Harvard Law education, replied that the answer is more complex than any pilot would want to know. Translation: pilots are too stupid to understand all the calculations we had to make to be sure you guys get as little as possible. “The commitment that Larry made is the same commitment I will make—but…I will not put the company at risk to fund that plan.”
A massive round of applause for Mr. Smisek and thousands of rose petals (just kidding) followed. Picture in your mind Mussolini standing on the balcony, arms crossed in defiance, arrogant smirk welded in place and you’ll have the rough equivalent. He shoots, he scores, the crowd goes crazy! He continued, “I do recognize the obligation. And, I do want to preserve the lump sum—but…’ There’s that word again. “But, I will never put the company at risk…” We could argue that your appointment as ceo has put our company at risk—but that’s for another day. What is for today is a thought we kindly offer to the cheering throngs with the rose petals: If they can do it to us, what makes you think you’re so special? Or, put another way: Be careful what you cheer for.
Another pilot also got a chance:
“Last week I received a desperate call from one of our furloughed pilots. His wife had left him, taken their small child and cleaned out all of their belongings. The utilities had been shut off and he is on the verge of losing his house. The straw that broke the camel’s back was that his unemployment had just been canceled. If you truly care about working together, dignity and respect, and the fate of your coworkers, what are you prepared to do to assist? And, when can these plots expect to return to the company they love because they are, after all, part of our family?”
Mr. Kellner replied, “We have to be very careful to make decisions that are best for the 40,000, not best for individuals.” Unless the individuals are us, he might have added.
He committed to continuing to look for “every alternative we have,” for the 141 [sic] furloughed pilots.
Mr. Smisek put his oar in: “We can’t overstaff or we will not survive.”
Our pilot continued, “We have a scheduling department that routinely double staffs, or what we call double pumps—two duty periods in one day. We have pilots who leave on two and three day trips and get home nine days later because their days off are rolled, so I would argue that perhaps the staffing solution being solved by the pilots is not adequate. Secondly, I’d like to suggest that in lieu of a hangar party there are some people, perhaps some reservation agents and perhaps some others, who could use some help.”
Just a gentle reminder: these guys don’t give a rip about us as people—they don’t care about our families, our mortgages, the bills that continue to increase every month while our buying power decreases. They don’t care about Continental Airlines except as a mechanism of taking more and more for themselves. They have no long-term commitment or interest in our company as do we. They are passing through like locusts and when they’re done, it doesn’t matter whether or not our company is still standing—all that matters is that their pockets are full.
The obvious item of interest from the ceo exchange is that our management is perfect willing to take a negotiated retirement option from us and make us fight to retain it—while the rest of the employees cheer them on.
We have a lot of educating to do.
Item 3: Skeds Dangles the Worm; Trolls For EWR Pilots to Sit in CLE
Last week, scheduling added a new—or, new to us, anyway—trick to their bible, “Scheduling for Dummies: How to Fly 100% of Your Flights With Only 50% of Your Pilots”.
This time the offer was almost too good to pass up: go to CLE and sit reserve. We waited for the punch line, too, but that was it, that was the offer.
Forget about the contract violations contained in this limited, good-for-today-only offer and focus on the brassiness here: crew scheduling—masters of disasters, rollers of days off, flies in the ointment of our lives, the dogs amongst our cheeseburgers—wanting us to help them out of their dire straits for absolutely nothing in return.
As is the case with most bad things that happen to our good people at Continental, management is ultimately responsible for the staffing inadequacies that force scheduling to try to force us to violate our industry-worst contract.
Item 4: AmeriJet Pilots Ratify—The Strike is Over
We congratulate the pilots and flight engineers of AmeriJet International for their long and ultimately successful fight for a fair and equitable collective bargaining agreement.
After five years of negotiations, mediation and a strike, AmeriJet’s pilots overwhelmingly voted to accept their new collective bargaining agreement. This new agreement addresses all of the issues that forced them to strike.
The crewmembers’ tenacity and conviction to stay the course until the company negotiated a contract that would give them a fair standard of working conditions, benefits, a grievance procedure, and wages, is something that we should all applaud. This small group has made history in the airline industry.
We would like to thank all the other unions—both airline and outside our industry—along with those former AmeriJet employees who stuck by the strikers and lent their support. We know that their support helped the strikers stay strong and united. This is a great day in the labor movement.
And our day is coming.
Item 5: Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go to Work…
As if terrorism, our management team, and the TSA were not enough, we now have this:
Expert: Airline workers may spread swine flu; Employees, contractors can leave germs on any number of surfaces
The article is some good, light reading—especially the opener: “Airline employees who report to work ill are more likely than sick passengers to spread infections such as the H1N1 swine flu virus aboard airplanes, with low-paid workers posing the greatest danger…”
That last part must make us the greatest potential disease-carriers since Typhoid Mary and gives new meaning to the term, “airborne virus”.
Couple the H1N1 virus just beginning to bloom with our punitive attendance policies as discussed in Item 6 below—maybe we should all just shut the alarm clock off and stay in bed.
Item 6: “I’m Not a Doctor—But I Do Play One in the Chief Pilot’s Office…”
The lessons of Colgan 3407 apparently have not penetrated the thick, impermeable walls of the EWR chief pilot office. Many of our chiefs—who get to take sick and personal days without question—don’t seem to find the same charity in their hearts for line pilots as they do for themselves. “Pilot-pushing” is a serious problem—and it won’t go away even if management succeeds in beating our pilots into submission.
We have an attendance and reliability program; well, we don’t have it, management does, and it’s just another cog in the machinery that ensures management can staff our airline with as few pilots as possible—and preferably a lot less.
As many of our pilots have discovered, it’s very easy to find yourself outside the parameters of the policy. More than 3 sick calls in 90 days? You’re not reliable and you will soon be discussing your unreliability with your chief pilot. When you walk in, you will find yourself in a friendly chat about why you called in sick 14 years ago, asked why you have so little sick leave after working here 20 years, and where’s your doctor’s note for your latest bout of unreliable attendance?
Now, most of us are fairly able to determine for ourselves whether we are fit to fly or not. Most things that make us unfit are not things we need to waste a $25 co-pay on. Colds, flu, pulled muscle, fell off a ladder, cut yourself shaving and you only needed 25 stitches. Most of us can self-certify our unfitness to fly on any particular day—and we don’t need no stinking and inflexible management policy dictating our ability to perform our duties.
But here’s the rub: once you’ve been through the drill a couple of times, you rapidly lose interest in ever participating again and you will do what you need to do to keep from paying a visit to Dr. Chief Pilot. Score another victory for management and their efforts to shave another couple of pilots off our list.
The a&r program is an insult to us as professionals. It was forced upon us without negotiations and it is designed to treat us as irresponsible children who need a note from mommy after missing a day of school. It is also self-perpetuating: how many pilots come to work sick to avoid contact with Dr. Mengele in the office—and subsequently infect the crews they fly with?
One thing we can say: the a&r program incorporates two cornerstones of the new and improved “Go Forward Plan”; “Making Reliability a Reality No Matter How Many Pilots We Have to Beat Into Submission”, and, “Speaking of Beatings, They Will Continue Until Everyone is Happy”.
We remind those of our pilots itching to return the favor to their favorite chief pilots that a report card for every one of our micro-managers is available on our MEC website. It can be found at
www.calmec.org. After logging in, look on the upper left, just below the blue navigation bar.
Bring your red pencils.
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