GeeWizDriver

Which is my major problem with union leadership. Half the contract takes a lawyer to understand. Which was intentional, by the way. It's a lawyer employment document. But it has always irritated me how poorly the contract has been taught, explained, or interpreted. Moreover, the holier-than-thou attitude needs to END.

Don't get me wrong, NJASAP is a far sight better than most airline unions (yes, we're an airline-get over it). I appreciate the way the union presents its case publicly, the way it represents pilots and protects them from company over reach, and the efforts being put forth to secure major improvements to the CBA.

BUT, in my view many in leadership need to learn the best piece of advice I ever got about being a leader. I learned it in the context of being an instructor many years ago:

Never forget what it was like to be a student.

In other words, you might be the expert now but try to remember what it was like when you didn't know ANYTHING about a given subject and help the person asking questions without being a jacka$$.

MinRest

I remember being so confused trying to understand the CBA, and you always need an answer right away because you usually want the answer because of an issue affecting you right now. I always wished there was a contract compliance hotline run by the union that was staffed for issues. But also, I have never seen a pilot group chastize co-workers more for contract issues than at NJA, that is a weird cultural thing there...

But a contract compliance hotline would help a lot. It is so hard to understand contract language at most properties...

jtf560

I agree with your take on it. I learned the hard way on the message board so now I send an email to the stewards for clarification when trying to figure out anything that isn't clear. They all get the email and at least one of them will fairly quickly get you the answer. I usually start with the fact that I did try to understand the contract before going to them, but asking anything on the message board is unfortunately asking for a heaping spoonful of attitude and condescension. All that said, I have also gotten bad info from stewards before over the phone, but the email communication with them blasts to all and bad info gets remedied quickly by others.

GeeWizDriver

Great point and good advice. The heaping spoonful of attitude and condescension has been on full display recently...

FracCracka

It’s a toxic group, but it’s our toxic group.

Swedepilut

The contract compliance hotline is called a steward that’s what they are there for.

If it isn’t urgent send the steward an email and they will respond to that.

It’s not that complicated.

Njflyguy

TEB is less than 2 hours drive for me. If I were to choose that as my base, what are the majority of TEB based pilots seeing in terms of winding up at home during a 7 day trip?

jtf560

TEB probably has the most average overnights of any location. If your drive is over 30 minutes (per Google Maps), you can request a hotel instead of going home. That said, it will likely be less than one night per tour seeing as how there are something like 3000 airports in the US alone that NetJets flies to. A TEB base would be good for getting a lot of FDP since you would likely pick up an airplane in the NYC area most tours and fly quite a bit on day one and on your last day.

FracCracka

I don’t think I’d want to drive more than 30 minutes to go home so unless “less than 2 hours” means 20 minutes, you might want to rethink this. Except for the night before go-home you can plan on 11-13 hours of rest. 1.5 hours each way means now you’re getting 8-10. Now get dinner, unwind, sleep, get up and get ready, now there’s traffic…this can only end badly.

And really the Hasbrouck Inn hasn’t flooded or caught fire in a while, so it’s sort of restful. All in all, it’s somewhat tolerable.

Peabody17

And it’s not summer yet, so the cool setting of the air conditioning still works at HHH.