Being retired and not directly involved or affected, I’ve been trying very hard to stay out of these discussions but just like Silvio Dante from the Sopranos, I’m my own worst enemy and “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242H7F8D ... re=related
It pains me to see everyone at each other’s throats. The TA is good or the TA is bad, the LCC is good or the LCC is bad, the DC Plan is good or the DC Plan is bad, we have to make up for lost ground or there’s no way we can make up for lost ground, the MEC misled us or the MEC did the best it could, “live to fight another day” or “today has arrived”, the company is lining its own pockets at our expense or the company is broke, the company can start an LCC without us or the company can’t start an LCC without us, we have to “give to get” in the contract or we don’t have to “give to get” in the contract, our DB Plan is “unaffordable” (for the pilots) or our DB Plan is “affordable” (particularly for the executives), pay groupings are good or pay groupings are bad … I could go on and on and on and on …
Why is so much wrath and wasted energy directed at each other and not where it should be: namely, at the employer? The employer is doing its job at the negotiating table: competition is brutal, costs are too high, employees have to work harder for less, “the cupboard is bare”, etc. etc. etc. Their job at the table is to attack labor and they are very effective at it.
Labor’s job at the table is to attack management. So where’s the attack on management? The company can’t afford DB Plans for its pilots? OK, how is it that it can afford much richer (not to mention indexed) DB Plans for all its executives? How can a guy like the current CEO be paid (before he was rehired in 2009) $168,000 – I repeat, $168,000 – for less than 5 years employment at AC? If you care to examine how the executives look after themselves in spite of the “crisis” facing the company, take a look here:
http://www.aircanada.com/en/about/inves ... _proxy.pdf
Exactly how many executives are there receiving these amounts of pension and what amounts of pension is the current crop of executives looking forward to? Where’s the outrage on the part of your union? Why is your union not attacking the executive DB Plans in the same manner that the management is attacking your DB Plan? When you see management so concerned about cutting costs that they start cutting into their own pension plans, only then should you reasonably even consider changes to your own Plan.
The company wants to start another LCC operation. Did they not already have a go at it with ZIP and Tango? What is an LCC operation anyway? Does anyone really know? Is it one where the pax pays for checked luggage, where the pax pays for seat selection, where the pax pays for on-board meals, where the pax pays for headsets? Isn’t that already part of life at AC? Seems to me that they want to start a new LCC as a means of attacking pilot’s wages – and when the thing fails a few years from now the planes and pilots go back to AC, with the lower wage scale in place of course. Why is this union buying into that company line when they’ve already demonstrated twice before that they can’t make it work? This is back-door union busting, plain and simple and LCC is their Trojan horse.
Ah yes, wages. Well, you can’t reasonably expect wages to keep up, can you? Not if you’re one of those pesky little worker bees! You’re expected to keep your ear to the ground, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your eye on the ball, and be thankful that you have a job. I find it difficult to understand that your union would entertain any discussion on wages that at the very least do not allow your wages to keep up with inflation. How is everybody else in this company doing on the wage front? Does your union even know? Instead of trying to defend your own wages, you should be attacking, by way of example, the money management finds to pay itself - like the nice little $5M “retention” bonus the CEO has arranged for himself. If you knew the half of the differing “compensation” packages paid to executives you would surely see no need to defend, let alone justify the wages you earn. Where’s your union on that front?
Where is the real problem in this company? Is it with the pilots? I think not. The line pilots in Flight Ops are a lean and efficient operation. One has only to start looking up the organizational chart to see where the fat and real costs begin. Just in Flt Ops alone, how many Managers of This and Managers of That do you have? Like the April 1, 2011 memo announcing the creation of a new Manager, Non Revenue Flight Operations. One might think that this was just an April Fool’s joke, wouldn’t one? In this outfit though, all bets are off.
But Flight Operations is just one tiny fiefdom in a much larger corporate labyrinth. Below the BOD, the CEO, the CFO, and the COO, there are 3 Executive Vice Presidents, 4 senior Vice Presidents, 11 Vice Presidents; all with their own complement of Senior Directors, Directors, Senior Managers, Managers, Team Leaders, Coordinators, and who knows how many other supervisory staff to help them run the show. What do all these people do anyway? Where’s your union on that front?
Why isn’t your union attacking the real problem? AC is a top-heavy, gluttonous, bureaucratic nightmare of an organization that sees everything, with the exception of themselves, as the problem. If they want to compare you to Westjet, or any other carrier, let’s start with Org Charts and compare “efficiencies” there.
There will always be those amongst you who are more comfortable being apologists for the company. They put up a good argument because the company puts up a good argument, which they then readily accept. The proof seems to be in the pudding: although I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, others have pointed out that during the road shows the NC used the company’s own PowerPoint presentation to sell you the deal. Hook, Line, and Sucker, I mean Sinker comes to mind.
At an ALPA convention a number of years ago we were all given a book: Flying the Line, Vol II, by George E Hopkins. At page 196, Hopkins wrote of airline executives: “Many of them seemed to believe that modern pilots were unworthy of their heritage, that they were unwilling to take risks that might jeopardize their affluent lifestyles. … unlike the Old Guys who had bled real blood and risked cherished careers to build ALPA, this new generation of pilots, with their Rolex watches and Porches, had no real fight in them. Maybe they were patsies, easy marks who would meekly submit to any CEO steely enough to take them on frontally.”
It’s up to each and every one of you as individuals to determine if you fit the image these CEOs have of you – and then - what are you going to do about it?
