Originally Posted by
intrepidcv11
If you are using this as an excuse for why you took 9 JM events during the Summer '08 then you are perfect rep of why CAL pilots were always management's little puppies. Myself and numerous friends had jetway encounters with 2 infamous EWR ACP's that summer and each one of us used the magical UNAVAILABLE word. Surprisingly we never heard further and had clean pay checks around our Pbs splatted line value. But oh we got told to be VERY afraid...
In my simple world, the last thing I would do with my buddy getting furloughed in 2 weeks would be to accept a JM assignment. But I heard plenty of excuses of why others just had to do take that JM. My favorite was always "ALPA won't tell us not to do it!"
I sleep very well at night. I actually faxed the definition out of websters dictionary of the word "unavailable" to a CP because it wasn't defined in our contract. I got out of my share of events, but I got tapped for more than my fair share. And, I know I blew over 60 hours of sick leave. The problem is this, if you are used to being off on the weekends and your trips end on Thursday or Friday, they are looking for guys to cover the weekend trips and you have a tendancy to get tapped. It took a while to figure out how to play the game, but I eventually got smart. The real problem is why wasn't the union shutting this crap down. No way should the company be allowed to do this with pilots on the street. No way should ALPA have not engaged on this and been prudent enough to not put pilots in the middle. I eventually refused a trip and said no, and eventually had to file a grievance which took 2 years to work out. So, thanks for the advice. You should have been the grievance chairman at the time. That would have been super.