570 class here we had 1 fedex, 3 ex continental, couple military, some commuters. Only one low time in the class. merit?

 

I understand the context of the poster's use of the word merit. I don't think the implication is that anybody hired past 78-79 wasn't hired on merit.

I would describe my peers as extremely qualified and smart. ( I'm the exception in the "smarts" department and have no idea how I passed the Stanine) As a 78 hire, with the exception of the EEOC folks, just about ALL my peers were ueber qualified. Everybody in my class were high time military guys, some with masters degrees. At the time there had been NO pilots hired by United for some 8 years and the pool of ultra qualified candidates was ridiculously high....I heard something like 20,000. Classes were small....6-8 at the time I was hired.

In any case....a great bunch of pilots IMHO. They also were VERY strong during the strike too, with a miniscule scab %.

 

No worries. Understood.

Anybody know how many were interviewed and hired in the short 07/08 hiring?

 

It was a great post Untied. Thanx for putting forth the effort.

The Scab issue is not so easily decipherable at CAL. There are a couple of factors that made the strike quite different than the UAL '85 strike. Lorenzo, a darling of presidents Reagan and Bush, struck (locked-out) the pilots, with the full support of Ronald Reagan. The pilots did not decide or vote to strike CAL until much later. ALPA instructed many pilots to continue working during the first few months. NYAir and PE were already circumventing fair wages before the strike. ALPA threw the striking CAL pilots under the bus to insure an '85 UAL-ALPA, <month strike, had the best chance for success.

All in all, most scabs are not worth squirrel **** on dog sh!t, but there are about 5%-10% that are excellent pilots and unionists. Find out who you need to isolate and the vast majority of CAL pilots with be with you in administering justice (isolation / ostracization). Keep in mind that scabs are the most unified subgroup on the CAL list. The company loves them and they keep good communication between themselves. I hope that you can make the bad ones just as miserable as they have kept us. I'm counting on it.

 

Someone says one group (and uses very broad brush to put folks in that group) wasn't hired on merit and those folks come in and defend their group and then use their broad brush to say how another group wasn't hired on merit. It could be a never ending conversation/debate. Without using a broad brush I'll just make few points.

1) There were folks hired at UAL with zero time, none of which were minority.

2) There were folks hired at UAL with under 1000 hours. Some of which were minorities, some of which were white male, and surely not all EEOC.

3) All minorities were not what some of you are categorizing as EEOC, and the assertion is extremely unfair.

4) All groups have extremely high experience and some lower time folks.

5) UALs safety record is better than most in spite of the great pressures put on the pilot group in the last 10 years and is generally comprised of well above just average aviators.


Can we stop having to defend one group of pilots here and vilifying another? It's really a worthless conversation.

 

Good post overall. We'll always manage to not pick up some really qualified people while a few morons slip through the cracks. Probably true everywhere (I know it is everywhere I have worked).

DC 2172/1437

 

I totally understand wanch, but so you know when some of the 78 79 guys were layed off they showed up at a corporate operator looking for g-2 or falcon 20 jobs whatever but there resumes consisted of c-150 time or 737 flight engineer time and yes they were white males. Again I don't mean to knock any group but there is quite a mix in any group you look at on this property. I have always gotten along well with all on the property except one and that group we all know.

Just did not appreciate some of the comments on the original post.

We should be working at unity and sometimes it does not appear that way.

 

Interesting read, but I would agree that some of those perceptions are probably opinion-based.

I can't describe all the history at CAL because I wasn't around for all of it, but here we have:

Old Continental
Old Eastern
Old Texas
Original Frontier
NY Air
People Express
Old Continental Express
Flow Through Continental Express
Preferential Hiring Continental Express
Continental Interns
Continental Express Interns
Scabs, and finally,
Super Scabs

I think I hit all the different groups here at CAL. Maybe someone can correct me. You will need the scab list though as the employee number or hire date will not give you the full story. Just those two together could be about 90% accurate, but some of the guys hired during that time were Old Frontier and given numbers similar to the scabs. Others worked the ramp or whatever during college and when they came on as pilots were given their original CAL (scab similar) employee number.

It gets complicated, but that new updated "All UniCAL Scab" list will be interesting and important to see, esp. since we are all going to be getting new employee ID numbers sometime later this year. The current scab list I have has everyone on it and I would like to see one that is updated as guys leave the company so it's easier to count down to the day when they are finally gone from the cockpit. Guess I could do the same with the seniority list here myself, though.

 

You are correct on a FEW guys (gals)....the CAL employee number is not always a 100% 'marker' of a SCAB.....MOST of the time, but NOT all the time.....

Just had the 'pleasure' of flying with one of our saviors this past week. Being a West Coast commuter, and having the 'mark' of being a true scab (attitude/history/and emply # to go with/verify it), he could NOT be more elated that "Jeffery and Company" are changing everyone's employee numbers sometime later this year as we roll deeper in our Merger.

Listening to him 'oozing with excitement' on the topic for 30+ mins over the Amazon at 3AM in the morning was enough to make me want to crawl into the crew-rest seat to puke......not return for the remainder of the flight.

I truly hope he, and the rest of the CAL-POS's like him, are treated accordingly when we become on big happy family.

 

From an outsider's perspective, how about ya'll focus on solidarity & unity instead of labeling various 'groups'? Seems like an exercise in futility. (with exception of scabs) When I jumpseat UAL on a weekly basis all I see for the most part are friendly & professional crews that I would be happy to work with in the future. I know ya'll have been through a lot of bad times, but I for one am pulling for you.

I understand the importance of history and keeping furloughs in mind, but it would seem efforts in unifying UniCal will go a lot further than various labels.