surreal1221
Well-Known Member
Five Characteristics of Airline Pilots (That Management Can Exploit)
Editor’s note: The following is a slightly edited reprint of an article that originally appeared in the Roundup, the Delta Council 47 publication.
Everyone, and every group, has inherent vulnerabilities. The great disadvantage is in not realizing what those vulnerabilities are, and therefore, not guarding against their exploitation. If vulnerabilities are known and understood, they are effectively eliminated. For a little insight into how the nature of our airline pilot personality can be exploited, and how we can keep that from happening, think about the following.
1. Airline pilots like to “get it done – get it behind us.” We don’t like incomplete things hanging over our heads. Get the checklist out of the way. Get the paperwork completed. Get the last engine started. Fine for flying; horrible for contract negotiating. No one in adversarial negotiations gives anything resembling their best offer until they have to, so it can turn into a waiting game. This goes against pilot nature. We get impatient. We want it over. Management knows this and will likely try to delay negotiations as long as possible. Solution: be patient and realize that negotiating our contract is a marathon, not a sprint.
2. Most pilots are middle class and college-educated. It’s a background that is vulnerable to distorted corporate economic presentations because most middle class cultures and undergraduate colleges imbue good solid supply and demand economics but not much antitrust, predatory pricing, or business ethics moxie. Supply and demand economics are skewed to high heaven by abusive business practices.
Most pilots and much of the public know economics very well to a certain level. The industry’s strategists and spin artists know where that level is. They seem happy to mislead with some things from beyond that level to further their interests.
3. The majority of airline pilots are, in their hearts, free enterprise advocates who know capitalism built America and now wonder what they’re doing in a labor union. The answer to that is simple: we’re labor. Well paid, maybe sophisticated, and fairly respected, but still labor. It’s not something a lot of us like seeing in our self-image. But we are labor, like it or not, and we must play on the field as labor. Throw out a couple of good strong capitalistic buzz phrases like “competitive,” “cost savings,” and “market place reality” and knees start to jerk—a result of 20 to 50 years of conditioned response for a lot of us.
When it’s all over, the great justifying goal of all of this—the cheaper, more competitive product—just somehow never quite happens, or at least, never happens to the extent it should. All of those free enterprise dollars kind of get stuck in management’s hands on the way to the sacred cheaper, better product. All the while, the pilot piece of the pie gets smaller while management’s gets bigger.
4. We are trained, trained, and trained some more to follow authority and we are slapped, slapped, and slapped some more for questioning or deviating from it. Who among us has not been strongly imbued with the feeling, built over many years, that if you follow procedures and policy (do what you’re told), you’re probably okay? If you don’t follow procedures and policy, prepare for a visit to the chief pilot’s office. When you get right down to it, it’s really the one unforgivable sin in this business. This is another characteristic that falls under the heading of fine for flying, horrible for business dealings. Blindly following and not questioning management’s rendition of economics will not help us achieve the contract we deserve. Management is simply not ever going to say, “We’ve got too much money and you pilots need some of it.” Not in this world.
When it comes to dealing with people in management, most of the time they are the ultimate authority. In business dealings, they should not be. Remember, when it comes to our contract, we are the final authority – through membership ratification.
5. Pilots cling to certainty and avoid uncertainty. Hurtling through the sky at speeds impressively related to that of sound is risky enough. After assuming that initial risk, the process becomes one of eliminating further risks. The less risk the better. Best of all is no risk. That’s what we strive for because the consequences of risk gone badly in this business are so terrible. Therefore, an attitude of “eliminate risk” is created among us.
According to R.W. Mann, Jr., an airline economics author, it also created a strategy for management’s dealings with us. Mann calls it the FUD strategy – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Management knows pilots don’t like FUD. In fact, we’re the world’s ultimate avoiders of these things.
Mann writes that management presents some fear such as furlough, shrinkage, spin-off, merger, or corporate collapse. They then introduce copious amounts of uncertainty and doubt (“it may happen; we can’t rule that out” or “some suggest this could occur”) and then they offer solutions that intimately involve pilot pocketbooks. They then stand back and let nature take its course. Pilots’ natural inclination is to not question whether or not the danger exists, but rather to accept that it does and look for and choose the safe way out. Management loves to sit and watch the pilots make the safe choice. Mr. Mann says it has worked pretty well. What do you think?
As a pilot group, we, like anyone else, have vulnerabilities. Some of them are a result of the years of concern we have had for the safety of our operations. Some are inherent in the background that got us here. The best thing for us to do is to know what our vulnerabilities are and that they can be attacked, have been attacked, will be attacked, and, when they are attacked, step back and evaluate the motives involved.
Discuss. . .or ignore.
anic:
:hiya:
You know there will be one. And you know the starry-eyed will still come to see the sights at FL330...