Originally Posted by rjlavender

Contributors,

Thank you. Thank you for exactly the responses I not only anticipated, but caused.

It is probably not a bad idea to remember at this point that union membership in this country is now at about 7.4% of the private workforce, the lowest rate in recorded modern history. It lost another 360,000 members last year. Undoubtedly, this is partly because many union members and officials are, for some reason, resistant to "outside" advice, counsel, and example. They simply want to do business the old incestuous way, and nothing is going to stop them...except, apparently, attrition. Unfortunately, general Labor weakness caused by attrition is directly related to the lack of union leverage encountered at FedEx. Union members are just too few in numbers and too divided to accomplish much these days, either at FedEx or anywhere else in this country.

While the comments on this board range from perceptive to downright goofy, the common thread is that the primary contributors are extremely predictable and easily manipulated emotionally. If it is possible for me to easily provoke certain desired results with my posts, one can imagine what the company can do with these types of characters when it comes to dividing and conquering.

One of the many things we learned during our two years on strike at Continental is that the chest-thumpers and name-callers are emotionally fragile. They are the first to crumble and cross the line when the pressure is on. If you, the reader, are a novice to such airline experience, you should know that the emotionalism expressed on this board is a sign of weakness, not strength. As Bob Chimenti explained:

This group demands an inordinate amount of the Union’s time, stimulates a modicum of constructive debate, but at the same time does significant damage to the process and desire of good people to participate in it....[they] will never be willing to make a deal, because the consummation of an agreement renders moot their discontent.

I will take it a step further and promise you that many of the contributors here will use their "discontent" to justify crossing the picket line if and when there is one. If you have not experienced such a scenario before, you will see dynamics occur that you will not believe. The mantra among strike-breakers at CAL (and I am not kidding) was "Frank will take care of me." (One can imagine what the mantra might be at FedEx.) When they turned their lives over to the "master," it was a sight to behold. We are witnessing the same metaphysical preparations going on right here on this board in embryonic form. Narcissism under pressure is a beautiful thing to watch.

I am not a know-it-all, but I do believe that my strike experience at Continental (along with deep involvement in all facets of it: political, legal, communication, financial, and things you don't want to know about), losing ten years of my career and a million dollars in compensation because of the stand I and others took, starting over several times before arriving at FedEx, and having an open mind to new things probably qualifies me to have an respectable opinion on the matters at hand.

Last, and this amuses me, one writer referred to my latest posting as "drivel." This is the same word that one ALPA official used several years ago to describe my "diatribe" on the Age 60 matter. I suspect he is eating that email about now. ALPA has suppressed and ignored good ideas that could have saved it a lot of trouble on a number of issues. But when it censured my writings simply because they dissented from established policy, I knew it was time to terminate the relationship.

I am a striker at heart, and when ALPA started pulling the same stunts as Frank Lorenzo, it was, for me and a few other long-time ALPA members, clearly time to Strike. I suggest that anyone who is tired of ALPA's inability to deal with modern problems consider doing the same.

Bob