Item 11: Chairman’s Editorial
I apologize in advance for the length of my editorial this week. I believe, however, the length is necessary because of a number of important topics that need to be discussed.
Over the past few weeks, as we have traveled throughout our system, Tara, Kaye and I have received overwhelming support and well wishes from many of our pilots. Amazingly, many of these pilots have been from our brothers and sisters in other bases.
We want you to know just how much we sincerely appreciate your support and respect. We also want you to know that we “get it”, we understand that we must continue to earn your respect and support every day through our actions as elected representatives. We will never take for granted your support and respect and we will work to the best of our abilities to move forward and build on the foundation we have created. We promise to always actively listen to what all of you have to say.
We have just completed our first quarter of our first year as elected representatives and I have asked that all of us, as LEC Officers, evaluate our own performance. After the election last fall, the three of us came up with our 30, 60, 90 and 120 day plan. Now we need to compare our actual results to our planned goals and make the appropriate adjustments as required to keep our plan moving forward.
Personally, I would give myself passing grades for the first two months of my term in office. However, May 1st I transitioned from a reserve line to a regular line of flying. With regard to returning phone calls and e-mails in a timely manner and holding to my commitment of spending a day a week in the crew room, I now join the ranks of some of the “Friends of Fred” and must give myself a well deserved “F”.
As the Seinfeld soup Nazi might say, “No more line for you!” I have bid a reserve line again for July. I fully intend to take advantage of my extra time at home and once again respond to all my phone calls and e-mails in a timely fashion and I will restart my weekly crew room visits. If I have yet to respond to your e-mail or a phone call, I ask for your patience. I am now responding to the hundreds that have accumulated over the last few weeks. International flying with five or six pond crossings and mixed in Lima - Newark redeye flying (which, in my opinion, is unsafe due to no IRO or adequate first class crew meals) plus a check ride on days off don’t mix well with an elected representative’s ability to adequately perform his job for our largest base with over 2300 pilots.
In the near future we will begin Phase Two of our communications plan. This includes a state-of-the-art, newly designed LC 170 website. I have asked the well-respected Captain Tim Boyens, our LC 170 Education Committee Chairman, to prepare many of his writings and charts to be added to the website. Your officer’s vision for this website is a well designed, clean and fresh looking site that is constantly updated. The new website will be the cornerstone of our ongoing education campaign to make all of our pilots fully aware of why we need massive gains in every section of our contract. Other additions include committee pages for all LC 170 committees, the unveiling of our “ACRAP” report, and the ability of non EWR-based pilots to sign up for The Magenta Line blast mail.
Also, as part of Phase Two of our Communications plan, will we will start a EWR LC 170 weekly Code-A-Phone message. As many of you know, I am a student of the old school of union representation. I believe that in the past, and to some extent today, many ALPA carriers and APA have used the old fashioned Code-A-Phone system to their advantage. Non-verbal communication, such as The Magenta Line, while essential, cannot convey things in the same manner as voice inflection or tone—and these are essential to making sure the message is understood in proper context. The weekly LC 170 Code-A-Phone message will be one more way for our pilots to become informed. Remember, information is knowledge and knowledge, properly applied, is power.
Last week I was able to attend the Continental Shareholders meeting. I was joined by over 260 of our brothers and sisters—almost half of them from Newark. My sincerest thank you to the many EWR pilots who made the personal sacrifice to travel to Houston to attend this important unity event.
Captain Pierce gave an outstanding seven-minute speech that covered a full range of topics, including many issues that, quite frankly, are completely unacceptable. Some of the items discussed by Captain Pierce weren’t contractual items—items such as Captain’s Authority, the overall respect of our pilot group by our managers and other employee groups, and the unnecessary hostage taking of 147 of our union brothers and sisters.
Michelle Bixby, the wife of Continental pilot John Bixby, spoke as a shareholder and gave a very heartfelt and inspiring speech from the perspective of a Continental pilot’s wife. It took a lot of courage to stand up to our senior management team, the Continental Board of Directors, and several Continental Shareholders, and deliver this very powerful message. My personal impression of Mr. Kellner’s and Mr. Smisek’s body language during Captain Pierce’s and Michelle Bixby’s speeches? Mr. Kellner looked as if he was at the dentist and having several teeth pulled—Mr. Smisek couldn’t even look the speakers in the face. I saw two men who were outraged that lowly pilots would dare speak such words in their presence and the presence of their peers. Watching their body language alone was well worth the effort of the trip down to Houston.
On behalf of my fellow LEC Officers, thank you Captain Pierce and Michelle Bixby for a job well done. The EWR LEC Officers would also like to thank SPSC Chairman Captain Mike Jones and his team for a well executed Stockholders unity event.
I am sure many of you are asking who won the bet. Well, it appears IAH beat EWR by five or so pilots. I was ready to make good on the bet but IAH LEC Chairman Wayde Beckman asked me to hold off until the special MEC meeting in July so there could be a recount and the final numbers could be presented. It’s absolutely amazing to me that the numbers would be so close considering Houston’s home field advantage. While I may have lost this one by a nose, I will always very gladly bet on our EWR pilots. You guys are well worth the risk and the return goes far beyond the short term gain or loss of an innocent bet. The only way we will achieve our goal of an industry-redefining contract is with the EWR pilots firmly behind us.
As you know, I have made mention many times in the past about one of my union mentors, retired United Airlines Captain Rick Dubinsky. Today, I would like to end my editorial by writing about another one of my union mentors—former Continental and Continental Express pilot and union leader Captain Mike “Papa Bear” Loftus. During my early days of volunteering for committee work at the IACP, Papa Bear took me under his wing and taught me much of what I know about unions and unionism. At the time, Mike was the CALEXP Liaison under the IACP single-union structure of the Continental and Continental Express pilots—his position today would be called Express Jet MEC Chairman.
Mike was an amazing union leader who truly had the respect and support of his constituents. He had, and has, a heart of gold and would take the shirt off of his back to help his fellow union brothers and sisters, and he did just about every day. My aspiration has always been to “be like Mike” in all my union endeavors.
In some small way, I will be forever tied to Papa Bear because of the events that unfolded on January 25, 1998—Super Bowl Sunday. It is a day I will never forget. I was just sitting down to watch the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre play the Denver Broncos when my phone rang. It was my union boss, IACP Strike Committee Chairman Captain John Prater. To be concise, Captain Prater told me my career was on the line and it was my job to set up a tail on then—Continental Executive Vice President C.D. McClean and Human Resources Vice President Mike Campbell. They were traveling from Newark Airport to a secret NYC downtown location to an emergency session of the Continental Airlines Board of Directors—the Directors would decide on either a full-blown Delta acquisition on one hand or some type of code share deal with Northwest on the other. The problem? I lived over an hour from the airport and Captain Prater gave me less than an hour’s notice.
During those days, our airline was owned and controlled by David Bonderman, the senior partner in Air Partners, a Fort Worth investment firm. Mr. Bonderman wanted to sell his controlling stake in Continental, and by far the leading contender that day was Delta and their CEO Leo Mullins. The Continental pilots were in a very unfavorable position that day. You see, although many of the economics of Contract ‘97 were negotiated and only a few items remained, when that day began, we were still working under Contract ‘95. Our scope clause under Contract ‘95 was essentially one line: “management’s best efforts”. If Mr. Bonderman sold his controlling interest to Delta, they were going to essentially acquire our airline—not merge. The catastrophic problem to the Continental pilots was the very powerful 1998 DAL Contract vs. our weak IACP Contract ‘95. Our scope section and career expectations were not in the same league as Delta. This left us in an extremely weak position; I believe if we were acquired by Delta on January 25, 1998, the Continental pilots that did go over to Delta would have essentially been stapled to their seniority list, and many of our pilots would have never survived the acquisition.
I was able, via numerous frantic phone calls, to locate someone who could follow Mr. McClean and Mr. Campbell once they got off the airplane in Newark. My operative kept after them as they went to their waiting limousine. He got the license plate. Captain Prater called in a favor from a law enforcement friend and got the name of the limousine company. Mike Loftus used his resourcefulness and quick thinking and got to a phone in the Continental Express Chief Pilot’s Office to call the limo company with a Continental caller ID. Papa Bear claimed he had a stack of very important papers and urgently needed to get those papers to the managers who had just been picked up in Newark or his job was on the line. Everyone believes Papa Bear; he’s got that kind of voice. Bingo! The limo company dispatcher bought Papa Bear’s story, and the address of the undisclosed location of the emergency Continental Board of Directors Meeting was soon in his hands.