It seems as if we only hear about the desire to earn more after the fact, as in the United case.

One United pilot I spoke to last week said they had never considered anything like this and I guess I simply find this difficult to understand.

Both sides in these arguments tend to suffer from the ‘ratchet syndrome’. When things click in the companies favor, you can never get them to click back in the other when the situation changes.
Every time we (pilots in our company) show flexibility and a willingness to (for example) trial a new work practice, the trial morphs itself into a ’set in stone’ reality when the savings are being realised with the reward being retained. We then have a millstone around our neck of our ‘own making’. This kind of perfidious behavior makes us very reluctant to lean in our managers direction and stifles creative activity.

If we all pull in the same direction we know that we can achieve marvelous things, but managers get greedy when they see marvelous things happening.

We all hope for a true partnership with our companies, what we end up with is something very different.

We live in hope. :-)

Happy New Year when it arrives.

They don’t all agree there either, but they do seem to be able to find a way to make it all work in the end.

And reasonably happy employees transalte into happy customers which is what keeps the airline afloat.

That end result is what we seem to be missing here.

On the “What hope?” question, I look back at Northern Ireland. Somehow, the rank and file got out of the way and the diplomats took over from both sides to make it work don’t you think?

There must be a way to do that in the airline industry. But right now, we have too many relatively small special interest groups fighting amongst themselves.

It is one thing to be reasonable with reasonable people but we are seeing company execs being financially motivated to screw the other side down hard. It is as though there are no points being issued for ‘being reasonable’. As a manager/exec, you either win and remove future flexibility from your employees or you lose (your share options and your bonus).

What hope is there for reasoned compromise in an environment like that?

All the best,

Norman

(My comment is based around what we are finding in ‘Corporate UK’, not the US. What happens ‘over there’ does end up ‘over here’.)

[ROE: UK Int carrier, 777 P1.]

There’s one Tilton and what, 9,000 UAL pilots I think. Changing his contract is easy. Changing things for cockpit crews is not so easy.

Since you sound like you might be a United pilot, let me ask why the group didn’t simply negotiate for some added contract flexibility based on an improving business environment when they had the chance?

My point is that while the pilots AND management argue about who needs more right now, the company’s service suffers.

And customers remember, I think.