Airline Pilot Central Forums - LAX C16 speaks the truth

C44...thoughts??????? Concessions????

“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”—Yogi Berra

July 22, 2020

Fellow Council 16 pilots:

Last Friday, Southwest Airlines’ vice president of Flight Operations announced that 24 percent of its pilot group applied for their version of the voluntary early out program (VEOP) or their version of a SIL. As a result, the Baltimore chief pilot reportedly declared that pilot furloughs will likely be avoided. On Monday, Alaska Airlines reported that they too have enticed enough volunteers for their various programs to likely dodge furloughs.

These two timely declarations came within days of Delta Flight Ops Senior Vice President (SVP) John Laughter’s July 17 memo in which he proclaimed, not so prophetically as it turns out, that “we cannot [preserve all jobs] only with voluntary options such as VEOP and paid leaves. This has been shown at our competitors with WARN notices being issued even with paid leaves being offered.” (emphasis added)

It’s time the Delta pilots held our “leadership” accountable for their failures. If Southwest Airlines’ and Alaska Airlines’ leaders can see the value in working cooperatively with their union leaders to create and implement mutually beneficial solutions that ultimately permit all pilots to keep their jobs, then so can Delta’s management. It’s not a matter of whether they “can” do it, but rather a matter of whether they have the courage, humility, and integrity to do it.

No more excuses. No more free passes. No more blaming the bat. We challenge Flight Ops management, as well as our CEO, to fully abandon their ongoing “demand” style of negotiating, their incessant and insatiable drive to extract concessions, as well as their irrational efforts to prioritize antiunion optics over sound business dealings, fiscal responsibility, and genuine leadership.

Chairman’s Corner: Flight Ops Management and the Four-Strike Strikeout*

I’m a baseball fan. When my team wins, I lavish praise on the manager and the players. When my team loses, especially if that becomes a chronic condition, then I hold the team accountable. When you think about it, that’s life. We are typically rewarded for our successes while we rue (and hopefully learn from) our failures. For those of you who aren’t baseball aficionados, a quick lesson:

In baseball, a batter gets three strikes. Swing and miss at three pitches, and you find yourself on a walk of shame back to the dugout, sometimes with a chorus of boos raining down upon you. In extremely rare instances, though, the baseball gods might smile upon the batter and grant them a fourth opportunity, as when the umpire calls a balk on the third strike, nullifying the pitch.

Four strikes. What a gift. It’s something that any batter should cherish and be certain not to squander—an opportunity to redeem oneself and deliver a hit for the team. Flight Operations SVP, Mr. John Laughter, has made it to the big leagues, or what players affectionately call “the show.” Like a minor leaguer called up to the show during a late season playoff run, Mr. Laughter was admittedly thrust into a difficult and unfamiliar position at a challenging time. What I saw was a pilot group receiving him with a mix of hopefulness and skepticism. Pilots welcomed the change but wondered whether he was prepared for what he was getting himself into.

It didn’t take long for Mr. Laugher to step into the batter’s box. With his memo of March 24, announcing management’s decision to renege on the spirit and intent of the SIL agreement from LOA #20-01, he swung and missed wildly on the first pitch. We, the team, shook our heads at how badly he missed. But we took a collective breath and wrote it off as a case of nerves or maybe bad advice from above or, perhaps, below. Strike one.

With his April 2 memo, Mr. Laughter doubled down on management’s fiscally irresponsible decision to refuse SILs. In that memo, Mr. Laughter erroneously claimed that SILs would only provide $8 million in savings for May and June and that “frankly isn’t enough.” Forget that management had previously claimed that the savings would be $10 million (also a woefully inadequate estimate). Forget too that management had repeatedly claimed that they would “leave no stone unturned” to reduce cash burn. Mr. Laughter’s second opportunity to connect resulted in an off-balance swing as he screwed himself into the dirt, twisting and flailing. Strike two.

Now it was getting real. Still, there was hope that the batter would learn from his first two mistakes, make appropriate adjustments, and drive the next pitch into the gap – a chance to show the team that he belongs in the show. But then came the third whiff. With his memo of Friday, June 26, distributed a mere couple hours after ALPA and management had agreed to the VEOP LOA, Mr. Laughter dampened the mood with the announcement that management was choosing to send Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices to 2,558 pilots, warning that management was preparing to furlough them. Mind you, no other employees received a similar memo. Why was that? Consistent with management’s ongoing antiunion campaign, they chose to single out pilots, to make an example so that other employee groups would see how unionized employees were treated at Delta Air Lines. The message? Don’t organize unless you want to be furloughed as well. Strike three.

With that third straight miss, the pilot group let out a collective groan. But then the ump called the balk and permitted the elusive fourth opportunity. Desperate to make contact, Mr. Laughter distributed his latest memo last Friday, July 17. And with that, he swung and missed for a fourth time. The hack was so bad that it can only be compared to swinging at a pitch in the dirt as the bat slipped out of his hands and sailed into the stands. In this latest fiasco, Mr. Laughter brazenly disrespected the negotiating process by bypassing ALPA’s duly elected Negotiating Committee and MEC. He chose instead to negotiate directly with you, the membership, hoping that he would divide and conquer the pilot group. It’s a page from a management playbook so timeworn that it must date back to the old timey playing days of Lou Gehrig and Mel Ott. As with his previous disastrous swings and misses, it failed miserably. Strike four. Take a seat.

I’m torn. On the one hand I’d like to call Mr. Laughter out and hold him responsible for his multiple missteps. He has repeatedly failed the pilot group despite our high hopes for refreshing and bona fide leadership. On the other hand, due to those same missteps, I’ve never seen this pilot group so unified, so engaged, so driven, so unionist. Thus, in a bizarre twist, I almost want to thank him.

Of course, being unified against something—such as an intransigent, unreasonable, and untrustworthy management team—is not as rewarding as being unified for something. As Mr. Laughter takes his seat on the bench and awaits his next at bat, if I were his manager, this is what I’d tell him:

“Learn from your mistakes, John. Think about what you did wrong and make the necessary adjustments. This is an unforgiving league. But it’s not too late for you to experience glory. You will have another opportunity to bring victory for the entire team if you deliver for them. Your teammates are not your enemy. Next time, throw out the old playbook, dig into the batter’s box, stare down that pitcher, ignore the chatter from those above and below, and focus on doing the right thing for your team. In short, get a damn hit.”

*Note: Incredulously, as this Wave was about to go to press, I learned that Mr. Laughter has swung and missed yet again with yesterday’s town hall meeting comments and memo in which new excuses for reneging on the spirit and intent of the SIL deal and for failing to come to an agreement on an extensive SIL deal were introduced. Additionally, he is continuing to negotiate in public. Please reach out to our CPO and respectfully let them know that management’s actions, including their utter failure to live up to their simple promise to do “everything” they can to avoid involuntary furloughs, is an unconscionable failure. A complete lack of credibility currently plagues the 4th floor, and this must be dealt with. This management team is the outlier in the industry and, frankly, they should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to hold hostages in exchange for a ransom in order to opportunistically extract concessions from the union.