Unity
04-27-2013, 01:58 PM
#1
Banned
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Mar 2013
Posts: 536
Unity
Attendance Reliability Program
April 27, 2013Dear Fellow United Pilots:
"They beat up on employees, fight with unions, remove anything unessential (like food) invent ways to create charges (like checked bags or ticket change fees), fiddle with fuel costs, ignore customers and constantly try to engineer minute enhancements to operations in efforts to save pennies."
Forbes 4-11-2013
That is your obligation as a union member.
The main takeaway from this is that management seems not to care what is written on paper, and they will do what they want. They believe that they can make examples of a few pilots to whip the rest of the United Pilots into line. One answer to this problem is to grieve the violations – which may be the corporate strategy, as a limited number of grievances can be heard per year. Management may think they can make us waste our time recapturing everything we have already won at previous System Boards of Adjustment. But what the Company is ignoring is the fact that this history issue was discussed in Section 6 negotiations, and the parties mutually agreed that past practice would continue to apply unless the language in the UPA significantly differs from the prior UAL CBA, upon which the UPA was based.
In the meantime the Company continues to violate the contract exactly as Frank Lorenzo did in the 1980s, just to tie us up in court.
An example of the new United Management philosophy is the “Working Together” guidelines. These guidelines are nothing more than a one-way street for management’s operational convenience. Using the Guidelines, management can break the rules all day long and get away with it, but if you are not the perfect child (yes, they consider you a child), then they will hold you accountable. Management even forced you to sign your allegiance to the “Working Together” guidelines just to get through Phase 6 training. If you refused to agree with it, the result was an NQ placed in your schedule and a loss of pay. You saw another instance of this philosophy if you recently attempted to book pass travel. If you did not acknowledge the Company Guidelines, you could not book pass travel. The UAL-MEC Grievance Committee has put the Company on notice of our objection to the Guidelines and will vigorously pursue this topic.
Why would the Company do this? They do it to intimidate you and eventually use it against you in disciplinary proceedings by telling an arbitrator that you willingly agreed with unilateral changes to the negotiated conditions of your Contract. The Company has made individual pilot lists of statistical operational performance. They intend to harass those pilots who are exercising their Captains’ Authority. This is management by testosterone and statistics and is, sadly, what this company is currently all about. Flight Operations management wants you to meet their definition of job performance through statistics or you will be sent to a re-education camp called ECRM, often in spite of the Guidelines.
The Company has unilaterally changed the conditions of our employment with their newly announced Attendance and Reliability Program. The LECs have recently put out some information on our objections to the new ARP. While the Company tried to sell this as a wonderfully flexible way for the Chief Pilots to deal humanely with attendance issues, we are seeing this program used as another punitive tool in the hands of managers intent on punishing sick pilots.
This ill-conceived program allows a manager to subjectively determine if you should be disciplined – up to and including termination – for just missing one trip, especially if it is on the wrong day or causes the wrong flight to cancel. Even worse, Labor Relations and the System Chief Pilots have created penalties for the legitimate use of sick leave. The Company unilaterally announced that as few as one and no more than five instances of appropriate sick leave use will trigger “Corrective Steps/Progressive Discipline.” This is a clear violation of our contract and well established, mutually understood past practice.
As the Company violates your contract, please contact your local grievance representative and give them your detailed information. This is especially true if you areaccused of being in violation of the Attendance Program.
Some triggers are:
·Self-induced fatigue – not a sick call
·Short notice sick call – where the pilot does not realize that he cannot fly until shortly before he has to report
·Sick call after receiving an assignment – pilot becomes ill after a reserve assignment or field standby
·FMLA – anytime an FMLA-approved absence is counted as an occurrence
·Military leave – anytime an approved ML is counted as an occurrence
Stay vigilant and document any incident that draws attention. If you have a flight that cancels, keep a detailed record of why. The only way the Company succeeds in their attack by numbers is if you don’t have the information to fight the statistic.
Sadly, the Company fails to recognize that this is not the way to manage employees. The Daily Finance stated the reality best last week:
United simply cannot be the "world's leading airline" unless it makes a massive effort to get on the same page with employees, improves its internal processes, and regains its place as the top-ranked network carrier in the AQR survey.
The UAL-MEC will evaluate its additional options at its quarterly MEC meeting next week in Herndon, Va. In the meantime, we hope that management re-evaluates its strategy going forward.
We are United,
Captain Jay Heppner
Chairman, United Master Executive Council
Here's something you can get behind and maybe achieve some unity. If pierce has sent out anything similar to the cal guys please post his words of wisdom to show unity at the MEC level.
Last edited by HSLD; 04-27-2013 at 02:24 PM.
05-01-2013, 05:24 AM
#4
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2008
Position: 737 CAPT
Posts: 1,882
Originally Posted by Staller
Here's something you can get behind and maybe achieve some unity. If pierce has sent out anything similar to the cal guys please post his words of wisdom to show unity at the MEC level.
From the Continental MEC Position Report dated April 19th:
The other item I would like to mention this week is management’s announcement of their new attendance policy. Please note that I say their policy. While the Company provided us a preview of the policy and allowed comments (as required per the UPA), for the most part, those comments were ignored. I could go on pretty good rant about how this is nothing more than another intimidation move by management to cover a grossly understaffed airline, and I could remind you once again, that we do not accept or recognize this, nor do we think it is in compliance with the UPA. I could speak to the insulting nature of these types of policies and how unnecessary they really are. I could remind management that our pilots are well aware of our obligation to not call in sick unless we are sick. I am sure you get the point.
Instead, what I want to remind you of today is more basic than even those truths. No management policy can tell you when you should or must call in sick. We are governed by higher standards on this issue, foremost of which is our own professional duty and responsibility to safety, our passengers and our fellow crewmembers to not operate flights when we are ill. Further, in managing that duty and our responsibilities in this area, the FAA has given us very clear guidance in the Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion (IM SAFE) checklist presented in the Aeronautical Information Manual, formerly the Airman's Information Manual, or AIM. Click HERE to view Chapter 8 of the manual. (Note: the subsection describing the IM SAFE personal checklist is at the end of Section 8-1-1 and follows several subsections.)
While it is true that management may not tell us when we are sick, policies like these can be used to intimidate or punish pilots even when they act in accordance with the FAA’s guidance. In this light, we should be cognizant of some of the content of the Company’s described policy. To an even greater degree than the previous policy at CAL, this one is draconian. The look-back time is increased from six months to twelve, and there are even times when a single event could give an overzealous manager a trigger for discipline. With their increased penalties for calls within 13 hours of departure, it would appear that management is more interested in early notification than in having a pilot wait and see if they might feel better after a night’s rest. We have always advised pilots to give themselves as much time as possible to get better before calling in sick, but this policy suggests that management would prefer that pilots call in early and for longer periods, so as not to trigger a late notice event or multiple events.
Last, it should be noted that even though this policy is meant to intimidate, is insulting and risks driving a wedge further between management and the pilot group, there has, historically at CAL, been very few (if any) discipline cases for attendance issues. I hope that UAL management continues with similar restraint. If they don’t, your union will be there to defend pilots who exercise their professionalism and duty when making sick calls that are in accordance with our responsibilities to safety, our passengers and our fellow crewmembers.
Capt. Jay Pierce
CAL MEC Chairman
05-03-2013, 09:20 AM
#6
HOSED BY PBS AGAIN
Joined APC: Mar 2005
Posts: 1,713
Originally Posted by UalHvy
Actions speak louder than words. Jay Pierce's action speak for themselves. Are you proud of them? Hmmm...
You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
05-03-2013, 09:38 AM
#7
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Nov 2008
Position: B-777 left
Posts: 1,415
Originally Posted by ewrbasedpilot
I would say at least 90% of the UAL pilots won't even acknowledge the CAL pilots in passing, so stop the "we are holier than you guys" crap. You like JP as much as you like the rest of us. You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
05-03-2013, 09:44 AM
#8
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,820
Originally Posted by ewrbasedpilot
I would say at least 90% of the UAL pilots won't even acknowledge the CAL pilots in passing, so stop the "we are holier than you guys" crap. You like JP as much as you like the rest of us. You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.After SLI it will get better. In the meantime don't get your feelings hurt. Need a cookie ?
05-03-2013, 09:58 AM
#9
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2008
Position: 787 Captain
Posts: 1,512
Originally Posted by ewrbasedpilot
I would say at least 90% of the UAL pilots won't even acknowledge the CAL pilots in passing, so stop the "we are holier than you guys" crap. You like JP as much as you like the rest of us. You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
You're actions towards us speaks volumes. Lee Mata is one of the few on here that acts civilized towards us. Maybe you should follow his lead.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
