Originally Posted by Scoop

"You are nothing more than a cost to be minimized."

I still remember exactly when the salty 727 Captain told me that as I was walking through the mighty 727 picking up trash and opening eyeball vents.

I was a total rube, fresh out the US Navy, and a brand new hire 727 Second Officer, so obviously I did not believe him - DAL was a great company and they hired me as a future CAPT and a leader.

I also still remember when I realized he was 100% correct and came to the conclusion that I was a naive idiot. It was when I received my furlough notice. The furlough was not what bothered me, it was post 911 and the industry was on its heels, but the fact that DCI was hiring thousands of pilots as we were laying off over 1000 Pilots was what bothered me.

Then his words came back to me "You are a cost to be minimized." And we were being minimized alright, to the tune of 50 to 80 mainline pilots per month.

That brings me to today's topic de jour - Gatehouse PA's and Uniform inspections. So what is the statute of limitations on being screwed over by management? Should we all be Happy campers now since Leo and Fred are gone? Are we all over our pensions being terminated? Should we be? Or is this management shuffle simply part of the game, Management screws over Labor and then is replaced by a new "Labor Friendly" management team and we are supposed to start over eager and fresh faced.

Well here are my thoughts on this issue;

Uniform Inspection - Who gives a crap, we should all wear our uniform within standards because we knew this was expected of us when we were hired. I wear my hat (and I am not even bald) and really don't care about this - it is a non-issue in my mind.

Gatehouse PAs to me are a totally different issue. I will wait and see what DALPA has to say about this and I am an FO so I don't really think I will be making any gatehouse PA's anytime soon.

But I am sorry that is when I am usually foraging for food since I only get a crew meal on over a 5+30 block even though that can easily lead to a 7 or 8 hour time period without food.

I admit the company has been pretty good about improving our contract outside section 6 via the SOT etc but what are we getting for this? How about crew meals and 1 positive space vacation pass yearly? We always hear "What are you willing to give up for that?" every time we push for something - well "What is Delta willing to give us formalizing additional Pilot duties?"

Just my 2 cents - Scoop