Originally Posted by
nicholasblonde
I spend a good amount of time working on day-to-day issues for our pilots in the union, though I'm not an LEC or MEC representative. Since I've fought some battles with our management myself recently, I have some sense of how they view pilots and "our issues." It is doctrine from the top down in our management structure (sans the ACPs) that pilots are greedy, want more than they deserve, are lazy whiny babies, and have the intelligence level of a bunch of angry chimps. They don't respond to letters from lawyers, they don't change hotels that have been written up hundreds of times and/or resulted in numerous fatigue calls/security issues, and you literally have to have a subpoena or a Federal agency directly involved to get the tiniest thing changed. We are NOT part of their company, we are a contract labor force called "Pinnacle ALPA pilots." They do not view us as part of the company on Nonconnah--we're just the guys that show up to move the planes, we are not their friends or their co-workers...
You can't change an organizational culture like that from the ground up, because they don't consider us a part of the organization...
You're a difficult guy to understand Nick. You fully acknowledge that Pinnacle management is impossible to deal with because they choose to behave that way and that you know this through your own personal experience. You then proceed to lay blame on your Union reps for not dealing with them. Sadly, this attitude has begun to permeate the rank and file members because of such loud and obnoxious proponents like you. That "staying 'not' current" stunt was about as sophomoric as I have ever witnessed, and that is saying a lot.
Like so many have said on here, your general attitude towards your Union reps is a big reason why they are not more effective. You denigrate your elected leaders with nothing more than personal attacks that lack any bearing on the issues currently in front of PCL pilots and then offer nothing as to what should be done other than juvenile suggestions of blatantly illegal work actions that would succeed in nothing more than digging a deeper hole for us. People like you create an atmosphere where your reps are so busy dodging bullets from our own pilots that they are distracted from focusing on what needs to be done....A NEW, RATIFIABLE CONTRACT.
You have some really good MEC reps in MEM that are very capable of improving a Pinnacle pilot's lot in life if you would just give them some support and let them make the difficult decisions that lie ahead. I understand that even though you are so vocal on message boards, you have not once reached out to any of your status reps to either get your questions answered or voice heard. This speaks volumes to your sincerity of actually accomplishing anything. Message board rhetoric does nothing except erode member confidence and unity. Don't be the catalyst that is the undoing of the PCL pilot group.