56 chautauqua furloughs - RAH parking 135/145's

You know, I get a lot of folks calling me asking if they should go to a certain airline, etc. The only ones that I always give them a "hard no way" on are the Republic family of airlines.

Unfortunately this is a prime example of why I do not recommend Republic Airways Holdings which includes Chautauqua, Frontier and Republic.

My advise to anyone looking is to avoid the entire Republic family and move on to someplace else.

Joe
 
MikeD said:
Good luck with that. There will ALWAYS be a pilot (many, actually) willing to undercut another to get into the industry and work for less. Damn near to working for free.

Pilots are indeed their own worst enemies.
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So true. It makes me so mad.
 
Nick said:
I think that management would have had to have looked far enough ahead to see what was likely going to happen.

The management simply is not intelligent enough (or more likely, just doesn't care) to realize that there is a human element involved that does not appear on their excel spreadsheet.

If any of these 56 ever end up flying the line at this company, do you think they'll, on average, be:

A) Helping the company save money and be on-time, the 'go-getters'

or

B) Show up and not care at all and do the bare minimum for the duration of every single workday


I think I have an idea.
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It had better be "A" because that is what they are paid to do. Would you accept a half-assed performance from someone you hired and are paying?
 
O&M said:
It had better be "A" because that is what they are paid to do. Would you accept a half-assed performance from someone you hired and are paying?
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No they are paid to do their job. No where in my FM-1 or AOM-1 does it say anything about saving the company money or being a go getter.
 
Gonzo said:
No they are paid to do their job. No where in my FM-1 or AOM-1 does it say anything about saving the company money or being a go getter.
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You might as well be talking to a brick wall.

O&M said:
It had better be "A" because that is what they are paid to do. Would you accept a half-assed performance from someone you hired and are paying?
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Remember O&M that time is money, and fast is funny. Also... synergy!!!

(Can someone post up some jazz hands pictures please? I'd like that to coincide with synergy)
 
O&M said:
It had better be "A" because that is what they are paid to do. Would you accept a half-assed performance from someone you hired and are paying?
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What I'm saying, O&M, is that any job out there, be it pizza delivery guy, school teacher, janitor, hotel lobby clerk, or airline pilot, has some wiggle room for the employee to deploy some level of work ethic.

What level of work ethic that is, is sometimes dependent upon how they are treated.

The best boss I've worked for thus far, back in a summer job in high school, treated us great. In return, they had a bunch of employees that showed up early just because, and didn't mind staying a couple minutes later here and there to get something done, and generally went out of their way a little to help out.

Had the boss treated us like crap, I think it would have been more along the lines of show up, clock in, do the work, and clock out and go home with no consideration for any extras whatsoever.

So, if a company is going to play with people's livelihoods as if they are bargaining chips, which is what some theorize is going on here, they can't reasonably expect to bring those employees back in the future and have a group of people that have the same, original view of their employer as they did on the day they were hired.

I had a check airman on my jumpseat when I was pretty new to where I work. I have had this guy on the jumpseat more than once and he has demonstrated himself to be fairly well informed of what is going on where he works.

I remember him saying (regarding the large airline he works for that did not furlough in the most recent downturn) that management took a good hard look at whether or not it would be worth putting pilots on the street. Of course you've got the fact that you'd need to have them out long enough to negate the training costs when they return but there are some other considerations he mentioned where there is some discretion involved. Apparently the statistics were revealed that, of the previous group of furloughees, sick call usage was higher than the rest of the work group and that continued for several years after their recalls. That is just one area; there are more. Let's face it -- if you think you might be getting the sniffles but aren't sure if it's allergies or the onset of a cold, you are faced with a choice -- "I hope I'm not getting sick, I'll head to work and see how I feel in the morning." OR, "Screw it, I bet this is a cold and I've got sick time, I'm calling in sick for the first few days right now."

Not everything is forced binary choice; that discretion adds up over time and over thousands of employees.

So while everyone should be, and probably is, an "A" type employee the day they are hired, I don't think there is any denying that any company, five employees or fifty thousand employees, is capable of turning their staff into quite a lethargic group of workers simply be beating them down and taking advantage of them at every opportunity.

If a company needs to furlough, then it needs to furlough. Aviation is obviously not immune to layoffs. But if a company can not eliminate people's jobs, it would behoove them to keep those people around if financially able. The gratitude on the employee side will show in their work ethic.

Those are my thoughts on the issue; they do not pertain necessarily to this group of 56 furloughs (because who knows, maybe more aircraft are going to be parked that have not been announced yet, I hope not for the sake of the crews but it is possible that we all just don't have the full story yet).

O&M said:
It had better be "A" because that is what they are paid to do. Would you accept a half-assed performance from someone you hired and are paying?
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Any good manager of employees at any good company in any industry knows there is more to it than that, or they are naive.
 
I'm sitting here in India reading your post and I just got to give you a big :yeahthat: , Nick!
 
Nick said:
What I'm saying, O&M, is that any job out there, be it pizza delivery guy, school teacher, janitor, hotel lobby clerk, or airline pilot, has some wiggle room for the employee to deploy some level of work ethic.

What level of work ethic that is, is sometimes dependent upon how they are treated.
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Really? Is that the lesson you will teach your kids? That there are times when it's ok to do a half-assed performance? Do you think that this lesson that is going to serve them well? in school? In life?

I don't know about you, but I have found that the people who generally get on well in life are the ones who let their work dictate their pay, rather than their pay dictate their work.

Don't get me wrong, I am not unsympathetic to what happened to these folks. It's happened to me, albeit not right after I was hired. But the way I see it, management is doing right by them as best they can. They're completing their training, which means everyone will collect a few weeks of pay, and will walk out with a type rating. They didn't have to do that. They could just as easily escorted them off the property with nothing. And who knows? Before it is all said and done, they may change their plans again.

You see this as "playing" with these people's lives. No businessman or entrepenuer I know looks at it that way. They aren't sitting back in a chair rubbing their hands and cackling with glee. They're torn up about it; hate doing it. But they also recognize that it is preserving the viability of the company so that all the other employees don't lose their jobs too, and so that these furloughees have a job to come back to.

But regardless of all that, you need to understand that the only reason anybody gets hired, in any profession or industry, is because the employer expects the employee to make money for them. That's why they pay you. Your acceptance of that job and salary obligates you to perform at the best of your ability, regardless of how you think they are treating you. After all, they're paying you, you're not paying them.
 
O&M said:
Really? Is that the lesson you will teach your kids? That there are times when it's ok to do a half-assed performance? Do you think that this lesson that is going to serve them well? in school? In life?

I don't know about you, but I have found that the people who generally get on well in life are the ones who let their work dictate their pay, rather than their pay dictate their work.

Don't get me wrong, I am not unsympathetic to what happened to these folks. It's happened to me, albeit not right after I was hired. But the way I see it, management is doing right by them as best they can. They're completing their training, which means everyone will collect a few weeks of pay, and will walk out with a type rating. They didn't have to do that. They could just as easily escorted them off the property with nothing. And who knows? Before it is all said and done, they may change their plans again.

You see this as "playing" with these people's lives. No businessman or entrepenuer I know looks at it that way. They aren't sitting back in a chair rubbing their hands and cackling with glee. They're torn up about it; hate doing it. But they also recognize that it is preserving the viability of the company so that all the other employees don't lose their jobs too, and so that these furloughees have a job to come back to.

But regardless of all that, you need to understand that the only reason anybody gets hired, in any profession or industry, is because the employer expects the employee to make money for them. That's why they pay you. Your acceptance of that job and salary obligates you to perform at the best of your ability, regardless of how you think they are treating you. After all, they're paying you, you're not paying them.
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Oh my dear, Often-wrong. You're like a Dickens character, wrapped as a gift for all of us.

I find it hilarious you pontificate the virtues of a good employee. You remind me of my poor uncle who can never figure out the real reason why none of his employees will stick around as soon as my cousin is hiring. Same small town in Nebraska, two very different ownership styles (guess which does which), two very different businesses. In the end my uncle blames all his woes on my cousin and the loyalty level of young employees. It's never his fault because he's making a profit and that's all a business man is suppose to do. It's so one dimensional and sadly comedic.
 
O&M said:
Really? Is that the lesson you will teach your kids? That there are times when it's ok to do a half-assed performance? Do you think that this lesson that is going to serve them well? in school? In life?

I don't know about you, but I have found that the people who generally get on well in life are the ones who let their work dictate their pay, rather than their pay dictate their work.

Don't get me wrong, I am not unsympathetic to what happened to these folks. It's happened to me, albeit not right after I was hired. But the way I see it, management is doing right by them as best they can. They're completing their training, which means everyone will collect a few weeks of pay, and will walk out with a type rating. They didn't have to do that. They could just as easily escorted them off the property with nothing. And who knows? Before it is all said and done, they may change their plans again.

You see this as "playing" with these people's lives. No businessman or entrepenuer I know looks at it that way. They aren't sitting back in a chair rubbing their hands and cackling with glee. They're torn up about it; hate doing it. But they also recognize that it is preserving the viability of the company so that all the other employees don't lose their jobs too, and so that these furloughees have a job to come back to.

But regardless of all that, you need to understand that the only reason anybody gets hired, in any profession or industry, is because the employer expects the employee to make money for them. That's why they pay you. Your acceptance of that job and salary obligates you to perform at the best of your ability, regardless of how you think they are treating you. After all, they're paying you, you're not paying them.
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Wow by far one of the most naive things I have ever read. I used to work someplace where we had to move aircraft off the clock. So basically for free. It was a scum 135 outfit. They didn't inform us of this when we were hired. So after a few MX events I figured out how much I needed to be paid and I made up for it. I made up for it how I saw fit. I'm a fairly ethical guy. Instead of wondering how I could save money for the company I was wondering how to make up for my loss. Which I guess should be any managers worst nightmare.

Oh and yes I do see managers and COOs as playing with people's lives when they do this type of stuff. I fly management for a lot of corporations. When a major department store's "fixers" were flown all over the country firing people you would think it would have been a somber experience ( personally I couldn't live with myself). However last flight of the day those guys partied and laughed so hard we could hear it from the cockpit.

So yeah the people who I fly around sit in the back of an airplane sipping booze cackling with glee, after firing multiple employees.
 
Nick said:
What I'm saying, O&M, is that any job out there, be it pizza delivery guy, school teacher, janitor, hotel lobby clerk, or airline pilot, has some wiggle room for the employee to deploy some level of work ethic.

What level of work ethic that is, is sometimes dependent upon how they are treated.

The best boss I've worked for thus far, back in a summer job in high school, treated us great. In return, they had a bunch of employees that showed up early just because, and didn't mind staying a couple minutes later here and there to get something done, and generally went out of their way a little to help out.

Had the boss treated us like crap, I think it would have been more along the lines of show up, clock in, do the work, and clock out and go home with no consideration for any extras whatsoever.

So, if a company is going to play with people's livelihoods as if they are bargaining chips, which is what some theorize is going on here, they can't reasonably expect to bring those employees back in the future and have a group of people that have the same, original view of their employer as they did on the day they were hired.

I had a check airman on my jumpseat when I was pretty new to where I work. I have had this guy on the jumpseat more than once and he has demonstrated himself to be fairly well informed of what is going on where he works.

I remember him saying (regarding the large airline he works for that did not furlough in the most recent downturn) that management took a good hard look at whether or not it would be worth putting pilots on the street. Of course you've got the fact that you'd need to have them out long enough to negate the training costs when they return but there are some other considerations he mentioned where there is some discretion involved. Apparently the statistics were revealed that, of the previous group of furloughees, sick call usage was higher than the rest of the work group and that continued for several years after their recalls. That is just one area; there are more. Let's face it -- if you think you might be getting the sniffles but aren't sure if it's allergies or the onset of a cold, you are faced with a choice -- "I hope I'm not getting sick, I'll head to work and see how I feel in the morning." OR, "Screw it, I bet this is a cold and I've got sick time, I'm calling in sick for the first few days right now."

Not everything is forced binary choice; that discretion adds up over time and over thousands of employees.

So while everyone should be, and probably is, an "A" type employee the day they are hired, I don't think there is any denying that any company, five employees or fifty thousand employees, is capable of turning their staff into quite a lethargic group of workers simply be beating them down and taking advantage of them at every opportunity.

If a company needs to furlough, then it needs to furlough. Aviation is obviously not immune to layoffs. But if a company can not eliminate people's jobs, it would behoove them to keep those people around if financially able. The gratitude on the employee side will show in their work ethic.

Those are my thoughts on the issue; they do not pertain necessarily to this group of 56 furloughs (because who knows, maybe more aircraft are going to be parked that have not been announced yet, I hope not for the sake of the crews but it is possible that we all just don't have the full story yet).



Any good manager of employees at any good company in any industry knows there is more to it than that, or they are naive.
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Yeah, that.
 
O&M said:
I don't know about you, but I have found that the people who generally get on well in life are the ones who let their work dictate their pay, rather than their pay dictate their work.
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Who said anything about pay? What Nick is saying is for a good boss he would run though a brick wall, but for a bad boss he is just going to do his job and nothing else.
 
Well to get back to the main topic. Classes have resumed as normally scheduledand no furloughs will take place.! Just a reduction in lines awarded…
 
I havent seen that yet but wouldnt surprise me...To those non-believers, do you still believe that this isnt a game??? When you are in contract negotations and you want to use a chip, you announce a furlough without ever going to the union first, or advertise COLAs, lowered lines etc. This is exactly what they did here, annoucne a furlough, piss off and scare, then you adverstise the leaves and such afterwards.Take 5 min and watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-0gxca-VxM ...You dont have 5 min, FFwd to 2:00 and start there.

"nothing from management is spontaneous..."
FYI ... Ron Henson is the VP Labor Relations of Republic Airways
 
oh yea.... Sorry left that out. IBT. Last updated email i got from them about the issue, prob about 5 days ago. Also a few people from the April class called in to take the voluntary furlough, but were told it was no longer needed.
 
jynxyjoe said:
Oh my dear, Often-wrong. You're like a Dickens character, wrapped as a gift for all of us.

I find it hilarious you pontificate the virtues of a good employee. You remind me of my poor uncle who can never figure out the real reason why none of his employees will stick around as soon as my cousin is hiring. Same small town in Nebraska, two very different ownership styles (guess which does which), two very different businesses. In the end my uncle blames all his woes on my cousin and the loyalty level of young employees. It's never his fault because he's making a profit and that's all a business man is suppose to do. It's so one dimensional and sadly comedic.
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Actually I am commenting on the value of being a good worker, or rather, doing good work. You see, you can rationalize and justify and excuse poor work all you want. But as I said, the people who get ahead in this life are the ones who do good work. I've known many people who have worked hard and gotten ahead. I've known many more who worked hard and never got ahead. But I have never met a single person who slacked off and got ahead.
 
HJB said:
oh yea.... Sorry left that out. IBT. Last updated email i got from them about the issue, prob about 5 days ago. Also a few people from the April class called in to take the voluntary furlough, but were told it was no longer needed.
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I would classify this as a rumor. I haven't seen anything official from either the company or the IBT. I did see an announcement that said there was progress, but nothing certain has been decided.
 
O&M said:
Actually I am commenting on the value of being a good worker, or rather, doing good work. You see, you can rationalize and justify and excuse poor work all you want. But as I said, the people who get ahead in this life are the ones who do good work. I've known many people who have worked hard and gotten ahead. I've known many more who worked hard and never got ahead. But I have never met a single person who slacked off and got ahead.
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This is the problem with you and Waco. You want and expect your widgets to perform at a peak level cause you pay them and they are an important part of the team (they make the plane go). Yet, even Waco will say the corporation is faceless and you should expect nothing more than being treated as a simple DOH number. You should expect nothing more than to be treated as a faceless widget that makes the plane go and O & M and Waco must approve of this message.

Really, there is so much more to a successful commercial operation of an airplane. There just is. If you respect your widgets somewhat beyond the call, they might not try to screw you at every chance or try to form a union to save themselves. Just a thought.
 
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