06-05-2008Open Letter to Bob Chimenti
6 August 2007
Dear Bob,
ALPA has sent me your letter dated 31 July 2007, titled "Negotiating Update." Therefore, I am responding.
I agree with some of what you have written, especially where you comment on the unprofessional public conduct of certain pilots. This conduct is both juvenile and damaging. During my presentation to the MEC in May, 2005, I raised the prospect of losing our "professional status" as the result of, among other things, the private and public use of profane language. By engaging in and tolerating this kind of conduct over a long period of time, I believe that we have empowered the "lowest-common-denominator" actors well beyond their natural level of influence. In my opinion, our treatment of each other is another area of "strategic" importance that puts us in a weakened state.
In your letter, you quote Santayana:
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
I have modified it to read:
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when your aim is off.
It has long been my position that the pilots' primary strategic problem is not "management," "globalization," "9/11," or any such thing. Rather, it is intra-professional competition created by a system of compensation that is driven by "seniority" rather than by valid economic factors. Such competition is easily exploited by management to distract various segments of the crewforce from their long-term collective objectives. In the past, I have written the following:
While pilots use seniority and the captain's hourly rate of pay as the references for relative value among pilots, managers to a significant extent use the lowest-paid, similarly-skilled pilot to determine the standard for value or, "who will work for how much."
The incontrovertible fact is that in the “free market,” with other things being equal, it is the lowest paid, similarly-skilled competitor...that drives the market. By not acting on the fact that they too are now part of a competitive “pilot marketplace,” pilots ensure themselves of over-focusing on the wrong end of the seniority spectrum in their quest to improve things. Just like customers, pilots will ultimately seek out the best deal regardless of where it comes from [the union or management]. As long as there are available skilled pilots in the same marketplace (i.e., furloughed pilots, commuter pilots, even “junior” pilots on the same seniority list) who are working for far less money and/or under less desirable conditions, managers know that they can always stimulate competitive pressure and disunity within that marketplace. This is not corrupt, it is simply the way the company has learned to do business with its external customers and competitors, and it is the way they now do business internally as well.
For pilots to use seniority to justify vast economic supremacy these days would be similar to a company using its date of incorporation to justify higher ticket prices. Just as consumers and competitors in the airline marketplace would ignore such a marketing strategy, so will "competing" pilots ultimately ignore seniority as a justification for vast differentials in their marketplace.
No other profession I know of uses "seniority" to justify wage differentials such as ours. It simply does not work. Salary differentials of $150,000 between pilots with similar skills will stimulate competition. And, nowhere are lifestyle differences across the spectrum of a seniority list so radical as they are at FedEx. Our system is archaic and is rooted in a non-competitive, highly regulated economic environment that no longer exists. Therefore (forgive me for saying this), I do not agree with the notion that all that is required:
...for the introduction of the B-777F is a pen and ink change lining through A380 and writing in B-777 in all relevant areas of the Contract.
I believe that a complete re-engineering of how we are compensated is necessary. While they may say otherwise, pilots only truly favor seniority when it works in their favor. This is not the stuff that unity is made of. We must implement a system that is economically fair. In a "fair" system, factors such as date-of-hire and size-of-aircraft would be of minimal importance and would be largely replaced by economically meaningful factors such as work load, day or night work, time away from home, danger, complexity of task, etc.
Part of the answer to our problems is to give pilots more choice in matters of lifestyle and workload so that if they are flying the least desirable trips and carrying the biggest workload, they will, at least, be getting paid a premium to do it. Please think of the dynamics that would occur as dollar-oriented senior pilots start bidding so-called junior trips that pay more (or earn more vacation), thus, freeing up the "senior" trips so that others may fly them. The "seniority system" as we know it is too rigid for our day and time. To pilots, seniority now means, "I got here first so I get it all." The similarly-skilled junior pilot is now saying, "I don't think so," and he is right. By providing pilots with more flexibility and choice, a greater sense of fairness may be created.
Until such a system is implemented, pilots will continue to act individually to extract their own sense of fairness within the system. They will do this by flying disputed pairings, opposing LOAs that negatively affect only them, crossing picket lines, and seeking to eject fellow senior pilots from their jobs on the flimsiest of grounds, such as turning 60 years of age. Likewise, the entire merger mess at USAir right now is a direct result of the outrageous emphasis we place on seniority. Seniority is too heavily weighted, the system is not fair, and the easiest way for a pilot to get a better deal for himself is to walk over everyone else. This has been going on for decades within our profession and everyone can now see the results.
Is there any question but that management loves the system that we created 50 years ago and still cling to? Does anyone truly believe that we will have more leverage the next time we go to the table? Is there some current evidence for that? I think we should start immediately to redesign our system so that there is an economic incentive for us to see eye-to-eye on the issues and to be unified. Words alone do not cut it.
Sincerely,
Bob
AIRLINEPILOT CENTRAL
