Originally Posted by
justjack
I agree with you completely. Parker hired Glass for one reason and one reason only. Much of my vitriol about Glass comes from the knowledge that the less I get, the more he will be paid. His sole purpose in life is to take from unions. He makes a living from taking from unions. Parker, at least, does run an airline. As much as I despise Parker and wish that he had the mentality of Richard Anderson, at least I can say he does have the common goal of wanting the airline to succeed. Do not misconstrue my skepticism towards Parker's ability to change as distention. We are unified. I do not understand Route66. He does have some valid points but they are lost in his free market dogma. I am fairly confident that if one were to graph the opinions of the union, Route66 would be an outlier- but then again, maybe we all are by virtue of the fact that we are essentially communicating about our contract on a blog. That said, I think that one of our systemic problems, as a union, is geography. We don't bowl together; have a beer after work together. Our families don't know each other. We don't even work with the same crew all of the time. The fact that we have never been able to put a face with the name- a family with the pilot, has only served management at a huge disadvantage to the union.
You see, NOW you are beginning to look in the MIRROR! One of the few that seem to at least trying to see that the cracks in OUR UNION mirror are NOT because of management, its BECAUSE WE DO TO OURSELVES by not looking in the LABOR mirror and trying to see if maybe...just MAYBE, it's SOMETHING IN THE WAY WE ARE DOING BUSINESS.
No one is perfect....good Lord I wish I could lay claim to perfection but I am nor more nor less in that category than you guys are. But ANY person and ANY ORGANIZATION MUST LOOK AT THEMSELVES FIRST to assess what THEY are doing that causes the mirror to CRACK.
Unionism looks all shiny and new when you buy that new UNION mirror but over time, if you DON'T KEEP LOOKING IN THAT MIRROR and re-access your position (you said geography....that is VERY ASTUTE!!! That is ONE of the BIG CRACKS) cracks and dullness appear and you don't wish to look at yourself as much. It's human nature to quit looking in their mirror as often.
Unions ARE a business. The union must have a business plan, it MUST be evaluated continuously and it must PLAN as best WE can for the future. Planning takes time. Flying an aircraft takes time. You know....TASKS OVER TIME! It's not complicated.
Unionism is like that sheet of mirror glass (if it were big enough) with all of us in it. No cracks and we all look proportional. The more CRACKS, the differently we all appear....to others as well as ourselves.
Is there some reason why the ABC's of the volant model CAN'T APPLY TO US? Access (union: Action), Barriers (union:Balance), Communicate (union:TRANSPARENCY) and follow ESTABLISHED AND WELL PREPARED SOP (Union: PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE).
The reason Jerry Glass and the Company continue to have control over us and labor is that we do what we do as knee jerk reactions...not trying to stop, take time to access the situation and plan the proper course of action to maximize gain and minimize liability.
So now, feel free to rip me as ANTI-UNIONIST because I want us to discuss it as THINKING, DISPASSIONATE PROFESSIONALS and NOT like what I posted from your C&R list of "burn the Company officers in effigy" so we can show them!
Can you guys at least try to put your thinking caps on like justjack did?