Endeavor votes to remove PAFCA

ATLiens said:
Comparison Highlights
- Overall, Minneapolis, Minnesota is 19.3% cheaper than Denver, Colorado
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Depends on the source apparently. Per the same source MSP is more expensive than Dallas.
 
The money is one thing and I get the frustration there. But dumping PAFCA is not the way to get the money. If I am not mistaken, this group dumped the TWU a couple of years ago for PAFCA, and now have dumped PAFCA as well. Unions are necessary in aviation. Here are the issues that I see with this.

1. With no representation, management can push dispatchers much more easily on things such as lowering fuel, higher workload...etc.

2. I don't know if there is a Dispatcher ASAP in place at Endeavor, but if there isn't this makes it much more difficult to set one up. ASAP is an invaluable program period.

3. Things like scheduling, vacations, and benefits are now at the mercy of the company. And they will use this to their advantage.

4. For people breaking into this industry, Endeavor is now a less attractive option than union outlets such as Republic, Envoy, and even ExpressJet.

What is going on here is some kids who are young and naïve, and think somehow going without a union will make things better. The company can dangle that carrot and they may like it at first, but good luck down the road, especially if the economy dries up and the majors stop hiring for a while and these kids have no way to move up.
 
BruinsFan said:
The money is one thing and I get the frustration there. But dumping PAFCA is not the way to get the money. If I am not mistaken, this group dumped the TWU a couple of years ago for PAFCA, and now have dumped PAFCA as well. Unions are necessary in aviation. Here are the issues that I see with this.

1. With no representation, management can push dispatchers much more easily on things such as lowering fuel, higher workload...etc.

2. I don't know if there is a Dispatcher ASAP in place at Endeavor, but if there isn't this makes it much more difficult to set one up. ASAP is an invaluable program period.

3. Things like scheduling, vacations, and benefits are now at the mercy of the company. And they will use this to their advantage.

4. For people breaking into this industry, Endeavor is now a less attractive option than union outlets such as Republic, Envoy, and even ExpressJet.

What is going on here is some kids who are young and naïve, and think somehow going without a union will make things better. The company can dangle that carrot and they may like it at first, but good luck down the road, especially if the economy dries up and the majors stop hiring for a while and these kids have no way to move up.
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Even if the economy stays good, dispatchers still at ENDV a year or so from now are going to regret this decision.
 
Delta Echo said:
Even if the economy stays good, dispatchers still at ENDV a year or so from now are going to regret this decision.
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Agreed. It's also worth noting that PAFCA is the union representing dispatchers at AA, UA, and DL...if you are at EDV this may have made it harder to get an interview or get hired with any of them them...as it's very doubtful someone at those carriers will recommend anyone if they voted to get rid of their union, and internal recommendations are a big part of how management decides who to call for interviews.
 
It's interesting to see all the Monday-morning quarterbacking on this despite (almost) everybody in this thread never having worked there and having zero idea of the rationale behind it.

Here's the real reasons the union was dissolved:

  1. Turnover is too high. The person who tried to get everybody to vote in PAFCA in the first place wanted nothing to do with it, and then left for another job shortly after. Our first union president applied for and took a supervisor position within 3 months. The following union president left last year as well to go to a major. This is a regional, and just about nobody goes to EDV expecting to stay there for their entire career, so there's going to be high turnover. It just doesn't work with a union like PAFCA where everything has to be run in-house, when it's easier to just do your time and get out rather than put any effort into it. This works at the majors where most are there to stay, but not so much at a regional like EDV.

  2. Union leadership was useless. Our own president even flat-out stated multiple times that the union needed to be de-certified. The same president also told us that for negotiations, he was just going to walk in and ask the company representatives "What's the best that you can offer?" and see what they say. In addition, he told all of the people in training "if you get in trouble, I can't help you or do anything for you." The all-expenses-paid trips for the entire board to go to several conferences each year (including ADF) using our dues rubbed some people the wrong way too.

  3. A worthless current contract. @Flagship_dxer is 100% correct about our contract being a bankruptcy contract. Hardly anything was covered in it and the pay bands were embarrassingly low. The crew scheduling committee (non-union) talked with their manager and voiced their concerns about the low pay. They were granted a $3/hr pay raise to over $17/hr starting, plus a company-wide 3% raise per year. That was a tough pill to swallow for most dispatchers as we slugged along at $14.xx/hr with a 1.5% annual raise. Because that's what the contract said. Multiple grievances from the union about workload, flight allocations, etc. were denied because nothing about them was written in the contract. Before they got voted out, TWU authorized a $6400/yr retention bonus in an LOA through the end of 2018, which was great. Funny thing is, nobody from the union ever approached them at the end of last year and asked for it to be extended; it was the company that came to the union and asked if they wanted to keep it going. See point #2.

  4. Too much internal division. AM shift and PM shift at EDV do not get along. Union board was made up of 3 AM dispatchers and 1 PM dispatcher (who didn't do much). The AM dispatchers threw the PM shift in the dust multiple times and approached management about things like getting hazard pay for having to drive to work at 2am. Yes, really. Ever hear the phrase "a house divided against itself cannot stand"? Enough said.

  5. Union could not protect anybody. The entire time I was there, I saw multiple people fired for various reasons. The union's idea of representation for them was having a random board member sit in the disciplinary hearing with HR and try to lie to convince them that they were a great worker, should still be employed, etc. Shockingly, that never worked, and I never saw them save a single person's job.
In conclusion, I'm really not anti-union. I think powerful unions, especially at the majors, can negotiate great contracts and really protect their workgroup from overbearing management. The issue on our end, however, was that our union really didn't feel like a union at all. It felt more like a student council, run by people who had no idea what they were doing (and at the end of the day didn't really care, as they were just trying to swim to the other side and move on with their career as well), and was just about powerless.

Could management have been flat-out lying this whole time and worsen everybody's pay/schedule/workload/work rules next week? Yeah, it's possible. Will it happen though? Debatable, but doubtful. And I'm certainly not a company kool-aid drinker nor someone who normally trusts management very much. The non-union thing works at several other regional airlines (SkyWest, the three Trans States regionals). I'm sure it will work for EDV too.

P.S. I no longer work there, I left last year on my own accord.

P.P.S. Keep going with the demeaning and degrading "you dumb and naïve kids" comments, those are pretty fun to read.
 
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JustAnotherUser said:
It's interesting to see all the Monday-morning quarterbacking on this despite (almost) everybody in this thread never having worked there and having zero idea of the rationale behind it.

P.P.S. Keep going with the demeaning and degrading "you dumb and naïve kids" comments, those are pretty fun to read.
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You are correct, never worked there. However I have worked as a dispatcher for multiple airlines for the past twenty plus years...at airlines that had voted for unionization but had no contract, airlines with no union, and at unionized airlines...both at the regional and major level. So, I hear what you are saying when you say that the union there wasn't doing much...I have seen this as well. Strong union leadership really makes the difference in how effective the union is. I still believe it would have been better to vote in more proactive union leadership, that would fight for a better contract, instead of getting rid of the union entirely. I saw cases at the regional airline level where having a union contract in place prevented management from making arbitrary scheduling decisions that would have required dispatchers to work more days per year, among other things. I wish the EDV dispatchers the best, but I'm afraid if they feel like it will all be rainbows and sunshine now that they are no longer unionized...I think they may be in for a surprise when they find out what it's like having policies changed on a whim by management.
 
Why are union members so quick to forget that THEY are the union. If you want a strong union it requires active participation from the membership. Everyone is so quick to complain about weak leadership but no one wants to step up and support the leadership. This is a problem at every regional, mostly because people view themselves as short termers so rather than putting any effort into it they just point fingers, complain about the pay, then leave. If everyone made the best of their short careers at a regional and actively fought for better pay and benefits then we might actually see improvement at the regional level. Otherwise, the union leadership positions fall to some senior guy who really doesn't have the junior peeps bests interests at heart. Sometimes that 6th week of vacation is what matters over saving someone their job.
 
I get that being under a bankruptcy contract is frustrating. But did any of you ask the crew schedulers what their pay raises were like when the company was bankrupt? I bet it was 0. It sounds like you guys needed a new contract and instead of showing solidarity with each other you showed solidarity with the company. So we will see how that works out in the end. But if you look at the history of labor relations in the United States it’s not hard to find that answer. Good luck finding another organization to take you on when • hits the fan. I doubt TWU or PAFCA will be interested.
 
JustAnotherUser said:
A worthless current contract. @Flagship_dxer is 100% correct about our contract being a bankruptcy contract. Hardly anything was covered in it and the pay bands were embarrassingly low. The crew scheduling committee (non-union) talked with their manager and voiced their concerns about the low pay. They were granted a $3/hr pay raise to over $17/hr starting, plus a company-wide 3% raise per year. That was a tough pill to swallow for most dispatchers as we slugged along at $14.xx/hr with a 1.5% annual raise. Because that's what the contract said. Multiple grievances from the union about workload, flight allocations, etc. were denied because nothing about them was written in the contract. Before they got voted out, TWU authorized a $6400/yr retention bonus in an LOA through the end of 2018, which was great. Funny thing is, nobody from the union ever approached them at the end of last year and asked for it to be extended; it was the company that came to the union and asked if they wanted to keep it going. See point #2.
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I don't know when the retention bonus kicks in (I think I heard 6 months IIRC), but $6400/yr plus the starting pay comes out to over $17/hr. Assuming it is added to each paycheck and not paid in a lump sum, that's more than most regional airlines are paying....

I work for a "regional" that has no union and I will say the doom and gloom in this thread is ridiculous. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a union. The dispatchers at 9E realized the union they had wasn't doing them any good and made the decision to move on. I don't think it was the wrong decision based on their circumstances. The fact that they negotiated such a nice contract with scheduling, who has no union, and the company took it upon themselves to offer an extension on the retention bonus says a lot about Endeavor. I think the 9E dispatchers are going to be just fine going forward.
 
JustAnotherUser said:
It's interesting to see all the Monday-morning quarterbacking on this despite (almost) everybody in this thread never having worked there and having zero idea of the rationale behind it.

Here's the real reasons the union was dissolved:

  1. Turnover is too high. The person who tried to get everybody to vote in PAFCA in the first place wanted nothing to do with it, and then left for another job shortly after. Our first union president applied for and took a supervisor position within 3 months. The following union president left last year as well to go to a major. This is a regional, and just about nobody goes to EDV expecting to stay there for their entire career, so there's going to be high turnover. It just doesn't work with a union like PAFCA where everything has to be run in-house, when it's easier to just do your time and get out rather than put any effort into it. This works at the majors where most are there to stay, but not so much at a regional like EDV.

  2. Union leadership was useless. Our own president even flat-out stated multiple times that the union needed to be de-certified. The same president also told us that for negotiations, he was just going to walk in and ask the company representatives "What's the best that you can offer?" and see what they say. In addition, he told all of the people in training "if you get in trouble, I can't help you or do anything for you." The all-expenses-paid trips for the entire board to go to several conferences each year (including ADF) using our dues rubbed some people the wrong way too.

  3. A worthless current contract. @Flagship_dxer is 100% correct about our contract being a bankruptcy contract. Hardly anything was covered in it and the pay bands were embarrassingly low. The crew scheduling committee (non-union) talked with their manager and voiced their concerns about the low pay. They were granted a $3/hr pay raise to over $17/hr starting, plus a company-wide 3% raise per year. That was a tough pill to swallow for most dispatchers as we slugged along at $14.xx/hr with a 1.5% annual raise. Because that's what the contract said. Multiple grievances from the union about workload, flight allocations, etc. were denied because nothing about them was written in the contract. Before they got voted out, TWU authorized a $6400/yr retention bonus in an LOA through the end of 2018, which was great. Funny thing is, nobody from the union ever approached them at the end of last year and asked for it to be extended; it was the company that came to the union and asked if they wanted to keep it going. See point #2.

  4. Too much internal division. AM shift and PM shift at EDV do not get along. Union board was made up of 3 AM dispatchers and 1 PM dispatcher (who didn't do much). The AM dispatchers threw the PM shift in the dust multiple times and approached management about things like getting hazard pay for having to drive to work at 2am. Yes, really. Ever hear the phrase "a house divided against itself cannot stand"? Enough said.

  5. Union could not protect anybody. The entire time I was there, I saw multiple people fired for various reasons. The union's idea of representation for them was having a random board member sit in the disciplinary hearing with HR and try to lie to convince them that they were a great worker, should still be employed, etc. Shockingly, that never worked, and I never saw them save a single person's job.
In conclusion, I'm really not anti-union. I think powerful unions, especially at the majors, can negotiate great contracts and really protect their workgroup from overbearing management. The issue on our end, however, was that our union really didn't feel like a union at all. It felt more like a student council, run by people who had no idea what they were doing (and at the end of the day didn't really care, as they were just trying to swim to the other side and move on with their career as well), and was just about powerless.

Could management have been flat-out lying this whole time and worsen everybody's pay/schedule/workload/work rules next week? Yeah, it's possible. Will it happen though? Debatable, but doubtful. And I'm certainly not a company kool-aid drinker nor someone who normally trusts management very much. The non-union thing works at several other regional airlines (SkyWest, the three Trans States regionals). I'm sure it will work for EDV too.

P.S. I no longer work there, I left last year on my own accord.

P.P.S. Keep going with the demeaning and degrading "you dumb and naïve kids" comments, those are pretty fun to read.
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One more thing to add to this. If we had kept the union, and even if they had negotiated a contract, we were told that nothing would be put in place until the Flight attendants contract was finalized. We don't know when the flight attendants contract will be in place. They have been negotiating it for over a year now, and while progress has been made, they still have not started negotiating pay.

Getting rid of the union allows for negotiations immediately, without waiting on 1200 flight attendants to agree on something while 61 dispatchers and sector supervisors continue to not get fairly compensated.

2 other points.

1. I think that if we negotiate our pay well, we will keep people here a little bit longer due to being able to live comfortably and not be looking for another job immediately after getting hired because you are living paycheck to paycheck. A bunch of Endeavor dispatchers work 2nd or 3rd jobs.

2. This could bring the hourly rate up at other regional airlines as well so that they can stay competitive to Endeavor.
 
Mspdxer said:
1. I think that if we negotiate our pay well, we will keep people here a little bit longer due to being able to live comfortably and not be looking for another job immediately after getting hired because you are living paycheck to paycheck. A bunch of Endeavor dispatchers work 2nd or 3rd jobs.

2. This could bring the hourly rate up at other regional airlines as well so that they can stay competitive to Endeavor.
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This seems like wishful thinking. Very few people would pass up an opportunity to move to a major because they made a few extra bucks at a regional. Generally new hires will be looking to do their time and move on regardless of how much they enjoy Endeavor.

And to your second point, it might or it might not. Maybe the other regionals negotiate nice new contracts while Endeavor gets left behind because the dispatchers have no mechanism to negotiate for better pay. There’s no way to know, and that’s the point.

As others have spoken to far better than I can, there’s a lot more to unions than a salary figure (work rules, workload, ASAP, etc).

who'swho said:
Why are union members so quick to forget that THEY are the union. If you want a strong union it requires active participation from the membership.
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This seems to be the truest take on the whole thing.
 
CPZ9900 said:
very short-sighted. very.

not sure EDV dispatchers are going to be very welcome at any union shop in the future...
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34% of them voted to stay in a union. It would be stupid to blacklist them and those hired after the vote. I can see punishing the well known leaders against the union. Are Skywest dispatchers blacklisted because they are from a non-union shop? Are GoJet dispatchers for being from an alter ego carrier?
 
Flagship_dxer said:
34% of them voted to stay in a union. It would be stupid to blacklist them and those hired after the vote. I can see punishing the well known leaders against the union. Are Skywest dispatchers blacklisted because they are from a non-union shop? Are GoJet dispatchers for being from an alter ego carrier?
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It’s one thing to be non-union... it’s another thing to be a union buster.
 
Flagship_dxer said:
So GoJet and Republic dispatchers should be blacklisted then for being from an alter ego. That is worse than voting out a union.
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Republic is a unionized shop. Are you referring to TranStates with regard to GoJet? At any rate, GoJet was set up by the parent company as a separate certificate, I believe it had something to do with ALPA and pay rates...there was no vote by dispatchers to vote out a union already on the property. Obviously, being non-union has not kept many, many dispatchers from getting hired elsewhere - but I do think that when looking for recommendations, dispatchers now at PAFCA-represented majors might remember that EDV voted out PAFCA, and be less inclined to recommend people from there. I don't think it would keep a major from hiring anyone there, but it might just be harder for them to get an interview with one.
 
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