Here it is,
I'm actually proud to be based in EWR for once.
If you look at the demographics of the base we have about 65% commuters in Newark. Of those 65% there are about rough justice [sic] 200 commuters from Houston to Newark. And if you are going to have a reduction, we didn’t want to force people out of Houston to backfill people that would be reduced here potentially…It’s to try to reduce some commuters…It’s an easier commute, more flights, better weather and fewer delays.” - Captain Fred Abbott, Newark Pilot Meeting, August 12, 2009
Today is Friday, August 21, 2009 and there are 14 items for discussion.
Item 1: Management Nukes Newark, or, “The Grapes of Wrath, 2009”
Management isn’t too happy with EWR pilots in general and your EWR Council 170 representatives in particular. We are the bulls among the fine china in their executive dining room, the fly in their lattes, the cigarette butt in their urinals. By the way, we have been told there’s no truth to the rumor that management has our photos floating in their toilet bowls with target rings around our faces. Anyway, since our election, they’ve been brainstorming (a process for which they’re sorely ill-equipped) on just how to stop us. The solution they came upon was, well—the term “outside the box” doesn’t do it justice. They decided to move about 300 pilots out of our base and send them to IAH. We’ve been puzzling over this puzzling decision since it was announced. As far as we can tell, it will do the following:
- Force a lot more EWR layovers by IAH crews
- Force junior pilots who bid EWR and made the commitment to move to EWR now commute to IAH
- Force flying that would naturally belong to EWR into IAH
- Send a large group of really very irritated pilots to the base where management has traditionally had more friends
- Create more opportunities for missed trips, sick calls, and other commuting anomalies
- Disrupt the lives of all the families this management decision will affect
What it will not do is make management’s life any easier—your EWR reps are committed to the representation of ALL EWR pilots, regardless of what base you’re flying out of this month. Management constantly reminds us of a bear stock market: new lows daily. Their past two years of fall furloughs have made us seasonal workers—this decision has made us migrant workers, too, and it’s only a matter of time until we see dozens of pickup trucks, granny strapped to the back in her rocker, on the road from the Newark nuclear wasteland to the greener pastures of Houston.
Since our election, management has been obsessing over the “roll-call majority” your EWR reps have maintained at the union hall. Holding this majority of votes has always made the EWR reps the most powerful among our CAL MEC because the roll-call majority allows your EWR reps views to carry the day when it comes to implementing policies, appointing committee chairs, and ensuring that dozens of other decisions go our way. Here’s the real news: your EWR reps have never had to roll-call anything. That’s right. We have gotten where we are because we, the entire MEC from GUM to EWR actually agree with each other on virtually every issue. Management’s newest and boldest bald-faced attempt to interfere in the representation of our pilots isn’t really going to work out for them this time, either. It’s an incredible miscalculation because, once again, management’s ship has sailed without them aboard. They still do not understand that the pilot group has changed and what they used to consider merely “the EWR problem” is now “the pilot problem”—and it encompasses every single base.
We are in Section 6 negotiations and neither side—the pilots or management—can make unilateral changes to anything of substance from now until we sign Contract ’08. While that battle rages, we’ve enjoyed pondering on what the real results of this upheaval will be: 300 angry, pro-union, activist pilots dumped squarely in the middle of management’s front yard. As a result of System Bid 10-08, management has provided the airlift to the enemy paratroopers, flew them behind their lines, and dropped them in exactly the right place to begin their attack. This is real genius thinking.
Management’s prattle on their decision is that they are “helping out the IAH commuters” with this bid. Just as we’ve all been warned about Greeks bearing gifts, it likely goes without saying: management never does anything for us, only to us. As is usual, however, this latest shiv in our backs is not going to help them. But we do have a suggestion. This idea, if implemented by our pilots, will go a long way to help management identify those areas of their operations that are not serving them well. As most of you know, our operation stumbles along every day through the “can-do” spirit of our pilots. We are operationally oriented and we “make it work” regardless of the inefficiency, waste, and stupidity that surrounds us. So here’s our idea: YOU ARE ONLY REQUIRED TO DO YOUR OWN JOB, YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO DO EVERYONE ELSE’S!
While we have a duty to Continental Airlines, our primary duty is to ourselves and our families. We—and especially they, our families—will bear the brunt of management’s latest slap at us through fewer days at home and the increased stress of commuting to a base we have no desire to fly from. The strong families will survive—but will incur additional hardships. Many families will buckle and fail under this stress.
Management’s aim is to teach us a lesson—and we will learn that lesson. We believe it is a lesson management will live to regret teaching us.
Item 2: Fred Visits EWR, or, “The Return of Baghdad Bob”
Who can forget Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf? His kindly countenance reminded many of us of our favorite uncle or grandfather and, despite the bombs falling all around and the tanks and infantry divisions encircling Baghdad, Baghdad Bob assured us with his “let’s all gather ‘round the campfire” storyteller’s delivery that Saddam’s victory was at hand and that all traitors and infidels would die swinging from meat hooks.
Captain Abbott was in town last week to deliver a similar message—and answer a few questions from the EWR pilots. When the pilots, led by our EWR Council 170 Chairman, Captain Jayson Baron, were done with the interrogation, Captain Abbott likely wished he’d never heard of EWR and wondered what he could have been thinking when he and his large entourage booked their First-Class, Positive-Space travel to visits us.
Freddy and the Reamers—which included such luminaries as “Turncoat Tom” Stivala, Jackson Martin, and Chip Benton—each have their own claims to fame: Stivala for delivering our pilots unto the evil of Contract ’02, Martin for deserting to management before it was fashionable, and Benton for refusing a dying pilot a hardship transfer that would have allowed him to remain in IAH. Together, they are so much less than the sum of their parts.
Experiencing Fred’s performance before a crowd of a hundred or so pilots was something for the ages, something to tell our grandkids about in our dotage as we nudge back and forth in our rockers wearing our “I Survived Continental Management!” T-shirts. Witnessing Fred dissemble, obfuscate, and shade and stretch with the best of them cleared up any doubt we may have had as to how this unassuming guy survived every management regime change since Frank Lorenzo: Fred is the ultimate “gray man”, the guy no one notices in the room, the chameleon everyone looks at and sees what they want to see. Fred has the ability to simultaneously agree and disagree with you and make you think it was all your idea.
He bemoaned the lack of pilot unity—as evidenced by our constant changes in the union—as the real obstacle on the path to Contract ’08 and told us how hard it was for management to work with us when they had to deal with new people all the time. He told us that we were our own worst enemies by electing representatives who are so hard to co-opt, uh, co-operate with, and told us that the pilots are the reason we don’t have a great contract. He told us that safety was the prime objective—as long as it didn’t cost too much and that rest for one pilot was not necessarily rest for another. When asked by Jayson Baron whether it was safe to work a full day in the office—ala Fred Stankovich—and then go fly a 14-hour trip to India, Fred said that Stank was “only the IRO” and that he could rest in the bunk if he got tired. We’ll be sure to remember that when we’re tired and we’re “only the First Officer” or “only the Captain” on a 757 trip—and we have no IRO—and no bunk, either.
We don’t know what kind of reception Fred was planning on when he showed up. What he got was scorn and open disdain as tough questions—and questioners—rained down upon him. His non-responses met with groans, laughter, and disbelief as he told us again and again that what we would consider as “doing the right thing”, he considered as “items for negotiation” and that the only roadblock on the road to Contract ’08 was the pilots—and the representatives they elected. He committed, under intense pressure, to “look into” several items—none of which will likely ever see the light of day again. He told us that management is “realigning” and “balancing” IAH and EWR and all for the benefit of the pilots. He told us that management was really trying to put bases where the pilots wanted to live. We suppose the DEN, LAX, SFO, FLL, and SEA bases will be announced shortly.
Fred is now back in Houston, no doubt diligently working on working together with the roadblocks and obstacles he considers us to be. He is probably figuring all the ways he can enhance our careers by shifting pilots away from such radical bases as EWR—but has ensured the rise of fed-up pilots who want to be paid in IAH, CLE, and GUM as well.
Management can move us anywhere they want—but when we get there, we are still the same pilots they tried to stop. It is a strategy that contains its own seeds of destruction—for management, not us.