I've heard from a few people recently that having sick calls on your record at a regional makes it more difficult to get hired on at the majors. Is this true? Do they even have any way of finding out about sick calls? I'm not talking about an excessive amount; I'm talking like 2-3 per year. It seems ridiculous that they would deprive someone of a job because they've had to call in sick a couple times a year.

 

I don't think getting sick infrequently hurts your chances - everybody gets sick somtimes. What they are looking for is trend data excessive sick time, always calling in sick on holidays etc.
When you go to an interview they ask to see your attendance record from your regional carrier.

 

The only time you have to concern yourself with sick calls if if you work for a wholly owned regional airline, and are applying at the major. With very very very few exceptions, most HR departments will not release anything other than disciplinary and training records... the civil liability associated with causing a person to not obtain employment is typically viewed by the legal departments as not worth the risk. The exception is with whooly owned companies..... it is ultimately the same employer, no risk involved. There are other exceptions to this, but they typically are limited to the last 12-18 months of employment history; again for liability reasons. Waiver documents, required to be signed as part of an offer of employment, are worthless since they are signed under duress... any first year law student could eat their way through one of those.

In fact, having spoken with the AA HR folks in the past, they said the only places they got complete full employment records from were the military, and from Eagle... everyplace sent sanitized records.

This "sick call" myth is often perpetuated by regional airlines to influence your willingness to violate FAR's.

If you are sick, it is a violation of FAR's to report to work, it is certainly also a violation for your Capt to sign the release that you are not fit for duty.

see the FAA advisory circulars concerning the IM SAFE checklist, and your company manuals regarding signing a dispatch relsease.

 

At Delta, during the interview you sign a document giving your airline complete immunity to any issues with them providing Delta with information about your sick usage in the last 12 months. Then, at the face to face interview Delta spent about five minutes quizzing you on your sick usage.

Lie at your own risk I guess would be the answer to that.

 

Wish I knew this 15 years ago .... !!!

 

Legally they shouldnt disclose any of that information. They are legally only allowed to say when you start and when you resigned. They legally cant say what kind of employee you were even if you were a complete tool.

In our industry they fool a lot of us with threatning our future...If you suspect they did that you, take legal actions...We shouldnt put up with them threatning or telling us they will tell Delta or whoever 10 years down the road what kind of employee we were...That's defarmation of character and slander!

 

If you didn't get the job, you could sue for slander and obtain a court order to view what was sent by your prior employer. Then you could take your prior employer to court and sue, claim slander and ruined career. Not being hired at the new place would only build credibility to your claim. A few million would be more than justifiable as expected career earnings.

Ex, a friend of the family is a doctor with a particular group. One doctor made a mistake and the group voted to kick him out. He took the group to court over slander and won a multi-million dollar law suit. Now enter some regional airline who thought they would get the final punch by sending off your personal HR information to the gaining company. This is sctrictly prohibited in most states, an excellent case for a law suit. I am not a big fan of lawyers, but hammering away on some regional airline wouldn't bother me in the least.

 

If you treat sick calls as they are intended, you should have no problem. If you abuse the system, it could come back to bite you whether you choose to lie about it or not. If you've been sick and called in 2-3 times per year, you should have absolutely no problems with any reasonable airline.

 

Airlines are always fair and reasonable with us. Everytime scheduling bends me over, they say it's my contract. Well, we negotiated sick time in that contract too. What goes around, comes around. Long ago I quite siding with managements and higher echelons. For one, I am not part of that group, two I don't get paid a fraction of that group and that group consists mostly of the types I wouldn't want to associate with anyways.

There are hundreds of reasons you could be sick, being frustrated with lack of pay and shotty work rules could be one of them.

 

Not if it's true.

All they need to do is provide the factual record. No comments. If you abused the sick call system, it will stand out by itself.

So, be careful, and if you are the "sickly" type, keep a personal, detailed record as to why.

Learguy