Sure. 35% increase in 3 years for no rational reason. Most means more than least.

 

Since we never had Pilots flying up to 65 what do we compare this data to?

Don't say AMR and UCAL they have different sick policies. Have you ever heard of "Sick if needed?" If not, then look into it.

Lets be adults here. With 13,000 Pilots I would say its safe to say some guys/girls push the limits and have probably called in sick when they probably could have worked. I don't think we have an epidemic of sick leave abusers. So why inconvenience the other 12,000 + Pilots who have never done this?

TA-15 Sick leave policy= Major Fail!

Scoop

 

So an increase is automatically abuse? Abuse means using it when you shouldn't right? Perhaps prior to C2012 sick calls were limited because people were flying sick, trying to make back lost wages from a bankruptcy contract. Maybe an increase is abuse, increases in our health care costs have felt abusive lets get some numbers on that and show how that must be fixed.

Who is legally required to evaluate his or her ability to operate the aircraft? It's not abuse until you prove abuse. Good luck with that.

If you have abusers deal with the abusers. C2012 clarified the rules. No questions asked until 100 hours or a triggering event, I think the group collectively exhaled knowing we were on a positive trajectory. No need to fly sick anymore. This assumes your numbers are correct, which I still find highly suspect.

 

Isn't it in the spring that most guys were calling in sick? Like March through May time frame?

Is that abnormal compared to other pilot groups or employees or the general population? Isn't that when most people tend to get sick?

We are pilots, we can't fly with even the smallest of head cold and allergies can be just as bad. I lost hearing for two weeks one time flying the 88 into PIT. It was Spring time and I had no idea that I had any sinuses issues or a cold, it was out of the blue and it required going to an urgent care facility. Hurt like hell and I wasn't even sniffling. We cannot take the risks an office worker or FPL person can take.

So do we have data from other airline pilot groups, other employee groups and the general population too? Are we that far out of line? Do we even have our own data? Are DAL/DALPA drawing the wrong conclusions from coincidences of normal human behavior and when our sick time restarts?

We need data. Do we have any we can look at before we are asked to swallow this sick abuse pill again?

 

Didn't the company change it's tracking methods for sick leave 3 years ago?

Sorry, waving your hands at us saying "it's gone up 35%" is not providing facts.

Until we see the raw data, before and after the company changed it's method of tracking sick leave, then it is an invalid statistic. By definition, not validated, not proven as fact. When the raw data over several years is provided, then the data can be compared versus peers' raw data to determine if it's an actual 35% increase.

If you let me choose the tracking methodology and numbers I can "prove to you" that your car now uses 35% less gas...or 35% more gas. Let me choose the methodology and I can "prove to you" anything.

It's really simple to manipulate numbers...and the company is really good at it when it's time to negotiate.

 

On average, I get about 3 bad head colds per year, mostly in the fall and spring, when the weather changes abruptly but also when school starts and my kids bring me home some new bug from school.

A couple years ago, I managed to go 12 months straight without having to call in sick. Was I never sick?

No.

But every time I got sick, it was on my 5-7 days off, usually the day after I got off a trip... sick for a week, well just in time to go on my next trip.

This past winter, I still got my usual 3 colds, but I had to call in sick for a trip in November, December, and January. Oh, I was working a lot more too. 90 hours a month.

When you are working more days every month, chances are your sickness is going to overlap your work days more. That's just the simple math.

But did the company measure how many more days per month the pilots are flying now, than they were 3 years ago, and did they plot that against the sick leave used? And what about trip building? Obviously if they are building more 4 and 5 day domestic trips than 1-3 day trips, and more 8-12 day International trips than 4-5 day trips, then "Sick Leave" will be higher, only because the days dropped will be more, as the trips -they build- are longer.

Some of this '35% more sick leave used' crap is self inflicted by the company, the rest is the result of us flying more days per month and being 3 years older.

What did they think was going to happen?

Working more days per month was going to make us healthier??

 

Again, totally off the rails. You do NOT bring facts figures and graphs to negotiations. Period. If you do that you're the loser because you're showing the weakness of your position. You exchange opening positions and then work hard to see if you can agree on anything. If you can't, the NMB comes in. If they think one side is being unreasonable, they may ask for data to support the unreasonable position. That's the only time supporting data comes into play. If at that point the company tried to show sick leave abuse data, we would simply show the NMB the number of pilots terminated for sick leave abuse.

This is how negotiations should go. But under the Moak doctrine, we use company supplied data to empathize with management, instead of telling them to stick their "data" back in their briefcases. We look terribly weak and amateurish. Hopefully we can have grown ups in negotiations this time.

Carl

 

A minority do? How much is a "minority?" In a previous post you say there is a "huge" spike in sick leave at the end of the year. How does a "minority" account for a "huge" spike?

Denny

 

The same way a small subset of the population might be responsible for a spike in crime. Even in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods most citizens obey the law. That doesn't invalidate crime statistics, nor a documented rise or decrease in crime stats.

What management is saying is that over the past few years there has been a spike in sick leave usage, even if it is a relatively small number of pilots generating most of the numbers. My problem was ALPA not contesting the data, not demanding comparative data, or if they did, not advertising that at all. I felt changing the sick policy for all of us due to the alleged actions of a few of us was not the right approach.

 

DC has a good point though. If there's a couple hundred pilots calling in sick, twice, or even three times as much as they normally do, how does that sway the numbers for a pilot group of 13,000?