Originally Posted by
JohnBurke
...Particularly regarding your experience as an aviator, Letters of Warning are pertinent. They're pertinent to the employer who uses you and they're pertinent to the insurance agent that covers you while in the employment of that operator...
What an employer deems pertinent is their decision, but according to the FAA and reflected in their boldface policy on this, such documents "should" not be pertinent. And if I may speculate as to why so, the reason is probably that such warnings are used when a high standard of proof is not feasible or worth the effort. It really does not matter what their reasoning is, the policy is the policy. Again speculating as to why, maybe the FAA wants a sandbox to use where penalties do not apply so they can still get some results in terms of enforcement but not have to reach a high standard of proof. Any warning any time, easy come, easy go. And such a low standard of proof is only reasonable if there are is no public disclosures of what took place, and there are no hard penalties. That's only my take on it, who knows why the policy is such- but it is.
...Such letters are not confidential; they are a matter of record, and they are an administrative action, just as enforcement action is administrative action...
They are not public documents and as such they are not a matter of public record. Special searches are required to discover them much like a special search (FOI, subpeona, court order, congressional inquiry, etc.) may be required to discover internal documents within a government agency. Same with this. If all documents are all public all the time, it impedes the use of and free dissemination of private documents within an agency, and it is an advantage to have an "internal use only" status assigned to some things.
...When an employer asks if you have ever been the subject of an accident or incident, have ever been investigated for an alleged violation of a regulation, have ever received a warning letter or have ever had enforcement action taken, the "e" in ever doesn't mean "in the last two or five or seven years." It means ever, as in your life history. Honesty with an employer is not naivety. It's professionalism.
A mugger can ask you where your bank account is but you do not have to to tell them, and it is not dishonesty with a mugger. If
professionalism means selling out your personal rights to get a slightly better job, then I disagree. You have rights, guard them and use them. FAA as the right to set some rules in aviation, even above industry's rules, and one of the rules they set was that warning letters are confidential.