Not at all, actually.

Contracts - Collective Bargaining Agreements
 

He thinks that mesa would be better off non-union with JO as CEO. Or that endeavor and republic would've done better in bankruptcy as at-will employees. Or that the grievance process has never helped pilots. Or that countless safety initiatives haven't make a difference in reducing risk. Or that kcm doesn't matter. Or that aeromedical has never saved someone's career. Or etc etc. Some people will always be in denial, I guess.

I know people who have been directly helped by ALPA in time of need. Anyone who thinks that a union, even at the regional level is a waste of time is just ignorant or brainwashed or both.

Nope the union does everything for regionals that they do for mainline. What’s lacking is job security. Why, because we are contract carriers. Look at the national level where they continue to fight against NAI and such. That benefits everyone. And I don’t think you realize how close that was to becoming a reality. Had that been allowed to happen it would’ve eventually changed this industry again.

What about RJ, the sapa prez? Or DVV (former brazilia LCA) from Fat who busted a PC? Or that new guy BV fired about six months ago up in PDX without sapa present? Or the 7-8 prop captains that were not afforded the opportunity to transition to the e175 because of their failed attempts on the crj? Or my new hire friend who forced to resign by the former DEN CP RG or be fired while on probation for bogus reasons, she was previous 121 and not a novice on how to behave at an airline . Sapa's response was they were unable to even attend the disciplinary meeting.

Here they are:

Section 1: Scheduling

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/5ad...b-original.jpg

You may have the fat end or the thin end first, but it's all going up there one way or the other....

Failed training is “failed training”. If the 4-5 E120 captains can’t pass training like the other 4512 pilots at OO, then training is holding the standard... there is more to most those stories..

Is there a training review board that has at least one pilot representative on it? A TRB is standard at all union airlines. There are almost always extenuating circumstances (the other side of those stories). Anyone that's been on property for at least one year deserves to have their issues heard before a TRB.

It takes work to get fired from this place. A failure in training won't do it. You get two attempts at each seat. If you fail, you go back to your previous seat. After a year you can try again. If you fail again, you go back to your previous seat and cannot bid for that seat again. We had some Brasilia Captains fail the CRJ twice and then failed the ERJ. A few got caught short when the Brasilia was retired and they had less than a year to retirement. The company won't send anyone to training with less than a year left, so they were forced to retire.

One very senior Brasilia Captain who failed transition to the CRJ twice and the ERJ once was kept on in an administrative role until he turned 65. Another was at about 150 hours of IOE in the ERJ and still not getting it, they offered to have him downgrade to ERJ FO for a year and then attempt it again. He elected to retire early.

If you get fired from this place, you've earned it.

You should talk to TonyWilliams about that. He found out he could be a SAPA Rep and be fired after a single training failure. Tell him how he earned being fired. I'd like to see this conversation.







.

I've never hard of this individual. What was the time frame? Upgrade used to be up or out, but that ended many years ago.

He was a SAPA cheerleader before you joined APC, but you can still read his posts and learn a little history. Who knows, maybe he'll chime in.






.

It was up or out that got him.

CRJ to EMB, with no previous EMB time... not trivial.

Up or out was never really a big deal... except for the upgrade + transition scenario.

How is that not considered age discrimination?

Didn't he stall it on the ride, and not during the maneuvers portion.

Pretty sure they paid them guarantee at CRJ rates... good way to see the world as a nonrev.

Don't recall much, although TW told me about it at the time.

But the bro was on PC at the time, not AQP so it would not have been MV/LOFT format.

Caution, slippery slope. I flew with one of the LCA at Colgan who was one of the instructors with Renslow. Sounds like he was basically passed around until someone eventually signed him off. Definitely someone who the “company” and ALPA should have noticed and let go.

ALPA (or any union) would never decide to "let someone go". They are essentially required by law or legal precedent to back a union member to the hilt in all cases, disciplinary, training, etc... even though the union membership and leaders might personally prefer not to. Union can argue for higher admission standards (ie 1500 rule), but once you're in they have to stand up for you.

I think there are exceptions only for anti-union activity.

Contracts - Collective Bargaining Agreements
 

Having a TRB doesn't mean that pilots who cannot satisfactorily pass get passed around. It means you get to tell your side of the story to people (one of which is a union rep) who aren't emotionally invested in your situation.


Federal law states that every covered person, whether they are a dues paying member or not, have a duty of fair representation. In other words, everyone has a right to be represented at a disciplinary hearing (nothing to do with a TRB although everyone has a right to that as well but in a different context of DFR that you are alluding to). But that doesn't mean that just because you have the right to representation that you have the right to get away with things. In cases of obvious egregious misconduct, the Rep is there to ensure the grievance process is as the contract requires. I always advised guys to be honest, take your lumps, learn from it, and move on. And that's pretty much all you can do as a Rep when someone was obviously in the wrong, make sure they get their due process and that they don't make it worse for themselves.

Yes, this is as it should be and certainly did not mean to imply otherwise. Union's duty is to assist, not judge or filter members. Otherwise internal union politics would inevitably mean some folks got more than their fair share of representation, and some folks less.

I've been at an mec meeting where a Rep outright refused to represent a certain pilot because of his history of antics even though this particular time was a minor issue. The attorney represented him despite it not being a termination event, when the attorney normally gets inserted.

Not defending the pilots in question. Just pointing out there's been more pilots fired than the aforementioned incident in Slc. SKW management is very good at keeping those items hush hush.

Those e120 captains were a clear example on how the company decided to interpret the policy manual to fit their pov and sapa was helpless in compelling them otherwise.

I could be wrong on the timing, but wasn’t Colgan non union when that happened?

Also, do you suppose without having actually seen training records, he needn’t be tossed in front of a bus? I would like to think the rumor mill wouldn’t write an epitaph. I do know airlines now train stall recovery differently after that accident.

The year previous the accident they joined ALPA, I believe. My point was that the LCA was conveying that the company was in over their head with aircraft deliveries and needed to fill them, therefore pushing guys like Renslow through.

I agree with a union having good protections, but while there, the inept company definitely shined through more so than the union.

Sorry to bother you guys, I dont work for you.
Can you tell me your experience with your PBS system and if its better than others you've worked with, or if you've ever worked in a system without PBS?

Quite simply AOS PBS,is the worst POS for the pilots, UN-godly to understand and has been fully tailored to accommodate the company. The software processes on what is a global need and will bypass seniority to complete the process to meet the company's need. The pilot PBS hotline is staffed by former computer engineers and in their words the program has been intentionally designed extensively over complex.

Bottom line is, I have talked with the most senior crew members at various domiciles and they usually never get exactly what they bid for. A few years ago the most senior FO in DEN ended up working christmas but obviously bid for it off.

The crew members that like it are usually very high end computer savv, but most hate it.

The company loves it!

What does that tell you?

It’s an unfriendly and unforgiving system but like with anything else of that nature, if you take the time and learn to use it, it ends up not being so bad.

The system is fine. The epic failure is that the company controls all the global parameters, anyone looking to switch from hard lines to PBS needs absolute and comprehensive language controlling all global parameters, ie it needs to be agreed upon in advance what those parameters are.

For one thing, require absolute respect for seniority, nobody works x-mas (unless they did it to themselves) while a junior gets it off... the system needs to re-shuffle pairings to make it work.

Global optimization is beneficial to the company, so they will fight for it. A pilot group will need to hire technical expert(s) to advise them in negotiating contract rules for PBS parameters. Do not let ANY parameter go unaccounted for in the contract. Also need blanket language preventing ANY uncoordinated changes of ANYTHING on the part of the company.

Otherwise they will quite literally create a new parameter, with functions similar to or same as one which is contractually controlled but simply give it a different name. Example, assume these parameters exist in PBS, and there values/use is limited by the contract.

Screw.Pilots
Hose.Pilots

Without contractual language covering the system cart-blanche, the company could simply create new subroutines, copying the guts of the ones they're not allowed to abuse but name them thus...

Bunny.Rabbit
Puppy.Dog


A lesser but real issue is that tech savvy bidders will be at an advantage, by that I mean if you have a computer science degree or programming experience, your mind will be better able to grasp the intricacies... it's complex enough that there's an art to it. You will have a significant virtual seniority bump compared to your liberal arts peers. No amount of training (other than years of programming experience) can totally fix this IMO. Even the #1 dude can easily hose himself for x-mas, and will typically have done so before he learns a few things.

The real benefit of PBS to the pilot is schedule flexibility, ie you can get Tue off one week and Fri off the next and so on, ie not locked into the same weekly footprint all month (although you can bid for a consistent footprint if you like it). You can also do things like load up your flying and get 9 days off and nonrev to europe without vacation.

While I agree that the pilot group needs control of all parameters, I disagree with the statement that PBS doesn't respect seniority. The issue with x-mas and other holidays is that every day is the same in the eye of PBS. All it sees is that it needs to assign flying and removes any obstacles that get in the way. It doesn't differentiate between x-mas and any other day off.

So what you would need is a day-off hierarchy that projects down the seniority list, i.e. a senior guy says x-mas off is more important than another day off. Once PBS gets to CN people it knows that not every day is equal. In turn it could protect the more important day off for the senior guy and give the x-mas trip to the junior guy. In turn the senior guy may not get another weekend day off that was deemed less important.

And no - our current 7 level hierarchy doesn't do that.

No, erase that entire paradigm. You have Stockholm syndrome.

If it has to do a CN, it needs to TOTALLY re-adjust ALL junior schedules BEFORE assigning that CN to a senior pilot who bid those day(s) off.

Unless there are hard schedule conflicts (training, vacation) which limit the solution, NO senior person should EVER work on a day he requested off if someone junior has that day off. You are correct that x-mas is irrelevant, that's just the obvious example.

This is hypothetical to a typical large hub base. Understood that a small boutique base may not have enough pairings, or enough pairing diversity to accomplish this.

The only way to prevent unreasonable manipulation of schedules out of seniority is to allow NO manipulation out of seniority. Otherwise it's too complicated and the company will get away with murder.

Yes, you could do that. But that could mean a couple of things:

1. have drop more stuff into open time which is not gonna happen. This would be one of the key parameters to control (to your earlier point) - or

2. effectively abandon the pairing preferences and make days off absolute and with a hierarchy. So for example, you CN junior people over x-mas and senior people get x-mas off. But if you still allocate all the flying, senior people may still get CN'ed over another day off or get their P1 pairing pulled and replaced with a PN because that is the only PBS can cover all the flying (or give you enough credit or whatever other reason there is). as long as there is a mandate to cover all flying there is a good chance that you will get screwed somewhere. Today there is no direct way to tell PBS where you preferably get screwed if you get screwed.

Or think of it the other way. PBS looks down at all the day off requests. At some point it will need to ignore them and place flying on those days anyway. If you are at that mid-level seniority where you have requested three days off that PBS needs. But for some other legality, line build (max working days etc.) or other it can only assign you one CN - which one is it going to pick?

Thats assuming that staffing is a fixed parameter, it's not (Stockholm syndrome).

If pbs were adjusted to better respect seniority, the company would have to hire a few more pilots. Oh well.

I'm not sure suggesting every requested day off needs to be granted, only that seniority is reflected as to who gets that day off. If a senior pilot creates a Chinese puzzle that pbs cannot solve that's on him. But if his last layer contains only a very specific bid, then no junior pilot should ever get that day off instead of the senior.

It shouldn't be but effectively is. There is nothing that prescribes staffing levels, min reserve requirements etc.

How do you get it in now? I really don't know how that could be accomplished. At this point the company is working everyone to the max with no end in sight. And if there is some slack, they are very good at finding new flying.

Make it happen - more power to you if you could solve that problem.

How about no CN’s allowed at all. If PBS can’t cover a trip, drop it into open time at time and a half.

How is that supposed to work?

Everyone bids every day of the month off and all pairings end up in open time?

Or everyone bids x-mas off and all x-mas trips end up in open time?

Cover it with reserves of pony up more money until someone picks it up.

So, all trips over x-mas gets dumped into open time? And then you need to have enough reserves to cover it all. And they are not doing anything the rest of the month (because line pilots want to fly those days)?

This is an extreme scenario but I am sure you can appreciate the inefficiencies there.

Most importantly, how do you get the company to agree on any of this? Try to nail them down on say 20% reserve staffing level to start with.

Oh I solved the problem.

As for you guys...

Get a union? Then settle in for a drawn-out contract battle over a period of years. This tough because the up-and-comers don't want to rock the boat, and the super-senior guys view unions... poorly.

SAPA could try to focus on QOL next time around. The company will avoid that like the plague. All recent enhancements have been linked to credit... so you get more, but only if you work more (pay, 401k, PPS, etc). A completely new paradigm would be to seek QOL enhancements that don't involve working more (min reserves, vacation slots, min days off, cadence, etc). I tried to tell them that last time.

You are painting with a very broad brush my friend!

I have voted yes on every union vote since the first one, teamsters, to give a time reference.

I'd vote yes tomorrow, and I know many close to my seniority would do so as well.