Jesus GOD, people. You're actually arguing over the fact that a policy exists. The policy exists so the company can point to a hard and fast offense. If there is no policy, then there's a nebulous "pilot vs management" your word vs mine. If the guy is lying to the company, unless he does something MONUMENTALLY stupid, there's very little hard way to prove it. "You called in sick before vacation. We think you were just trying to get another day off." "Nope. I was REALLY sick, sir." If there is no policy in place, how exactly are you going to discipline that guy? You can accuse him of lying, but short of hiring a private investigator to follow everyone that calls in sick prior to a vacation day, how do you PROVE he's lying? Should he be fired for lying? Yep. Have people in the past been fired for lying? Yes, absolutely.
Again, I love how people that don't work here are suddenly experts at what is/was going on and how to handle it. And yes, I guess I'll tag
@Seggy on that since he gets all uppity if people are talking about him and don't tag him. There's a policy. Now, since you're all up in arms over said policy, please tell me exactly what the policy IS. I can tell you I have ZERO problems with it how it is currently written. It gives enough leeway for those of us that call in sick to be legit sick and not be punished, and it gives enough leeway for management to find and punish the abusers. Not having a policy, we actually had guys with 20+ sick calls in a YEAR. More than a few.
And if you're going to use this thread to justify your "99% of pilots want to do the right thing," let's do that. 35 different people have posted in this thread. Of those 35, 17 gave opinions on the subject. Of those 17 5 were either in the "I'll fly even if I'm not feeling that well" or "I use sick time for blown commutes, etc" camp. Maybe they were joking, who knows? But we're talking about doing the "right thing" here, which is calling in sick when you're sick. So, percentage wise, the people doing the "right thing" is roughly 70%, which is far short of the 99%. If you're gonna use some random thread on the internet to try to back up your made up statistic, at least make sure it does, in fact, back it up. Even if only ONE person in the thread disagrees, your 99% value is shot. I PERSONALLY know enough guys here at Blue that will call in sick to "modify" a schedule to their liking to kill it to about 90% of people doing the right thing. But, I'm just going on my experience here. I'm sure if you take it out using statistics/mindset/surveys/science it's probably in the 80% range. As
@PhilosopherPilot said, since the policy was enacted, the sick abuses have dropped. Guess what else? People aren't complaining about witch hunts, either. So, to me, it sounds like the policy is working for BOTH sides. But forget what's working. Forget that guys are actually in a GOOD mood for once. We don't need the policy. Know what'll happen if they yank the policy and go back to the way it was? Guys will start "modifying their schedules" again. I just don't see how you CAN go after the minority without a HUGE amount of resources if there's no policy in place. How many times as pilots have we asked someone to show us a reg or procedure in a book to show where something is wrong or the proper way to do something? If there's nothing to point to, there's very little way of saying it's "wrong." If a guy claims "Sick time is my time" and there's no policy to say otherwise, well, he's got a leg to stand on. It's even firmer when our sick and vacation banks are a merged PTO bank.
How exactly is ProStands even going to call a pilot and say "Hey, you know you should't be abusing sick time" when there is no definition of what sick or abuse is? The pilot's idea of abuse might be radically different, and having a come to Jesus talk with ProStands when there's no policy in place won't do anything. Even if ProStands says "You do realize it's lying and can be potentially stealing from the company," the likelihood of the pilot "getting it" and shaping up is slim if there isn't a policy to point out where he's gone wrong. It's, again, nebulous and subject to interpretation, which is exactly the type of rules pilots don't agree with normally. But, since this would BENEFIT pilots, I guess we like it.
I can't pretend to know what goes on at Southwest or United. I don't now what their policies are or if they have one. Wish guys would stop assuming they know what's up over here when it's pretty obvious they don't have a clue.
