Originally Posted by
Red Swingline
You actually cracked the code here and don’t even realize it. The impetus behind these changes is to make being a rep a full time position. Under the new rules, every rep will get a minimum of 8 days of ALPA duty every month - 6 lounge days and 2 admin days. At 6 hours a day, that’s 48 hours towards the LCW. Just takes 1 trip to get into most LCW’s. MEC meeting months are easier to hit the LCW because they’re now worth 9 days (7 meeting days + 2 admin days) or 54 hours. But wait , it gets even better. The three months a year a rep is duty officer they won’t have to fly at all that month. And if that’s not good enough, they won’t have to fly any month in which they have vacation either. Throw in a couple of strategically placed sick calls, (which they can just convert to ALPA days under the new rules and not lose any sick time or accelerate their move towards LTD) and it’s conceivable that a rep will never have to fly the line again if they don’t want to. But don’t worry - they’re still eligible for green slips!
Do folks have any concept for how much time and effort, you might even say…. w
ork goes into being a rep? My wife would
shoot me if I ever ran for rep, those guys/gals are
constantly answering phone calls on a myriad of issues, fielding emails, angry rants, before they even do
any of the work you talk about here. It’s pretty much a 24/7 job. Same with the full time “108” hour folks. They have to be
in the office 18 days a month. You realize that, right? How many days did
you work last month? No working from home, except for all the
extra time above 18 days they have to put in. Many of the (very few) folks who get 108 hours are “working” nearly every day of the month. Besides the fact that the company has to pay for the majority of the people making 108.
I talked to 2 of my reps (
one of whom was on vacation), and they asked me to guess how many phone calls they’ve had to field from angry constituents about the issue. I guessed many dozens, maybe a
hundred +. He chuckled. Nope. Less than 10 in the biggest council by far. As another side note, when the company was informed they would have to pay more for the full timers, the company reportedly laughed and asked why we weren’t giving these folks 10 or 15 hours of pay per day.
The masses don’t care about this. At least not enough to write or call their reps on
this issue.