USAir sickout

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yes, they do have an obligation to transport people, however the power of the labor force must be felt.

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That's all well and good, just keep in mind that when labor takes it out on customers, as a way to get even with management, history shows nothing good comes of it. I remember a few years ago how every time I'd run into a United crew they would brag about their "Summer of Discontent" in which they caused so many cancellations. They were so proud. It was only a year or so later that they wished they could find any support from the public or politicians. In DC they had worn out their welcome since constituents were telling their representatives, "screw United and their unions and the horse they rode in on".

The customers are your business and your career. If you don't want the career just quit, don't screw up your customer's holidays. Just my 2 cents.
 
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Treatise on employee relations: Make people want to come to work.

(The worst way to do this is to try to motivate people with money. Bad for the bottom line on the statement of income, bad for the morale of the people who work for that company.)

Motivate people by making the objective of the organization the objective of the people. If the people meet their objective, the organization meets its objective.

Leadership. You don't need a corner office with a wall of windows to be a leader. You don't need to drive a shiny Mercedes to be a leader. Your don't need to have a great golf game to be a leader.

To be an excellent manager, you need to be a great leader. The CEO of a successful airline should be a pilot. He or She should fly a regular line flight at least once a month. Also, that person should work a late shift as a gate agent at least once a month. IF this person requires an office, that office should be the smallest cubicle in the building that is the farthest from any window. That person's reserved parking space should be the farthest from the building.

These are all signs of a great leader.

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I don't know about the CEO being a pilot, there are many critical jobs at an airline. BTW Delta had a CEO that came from the pilot ranks and who also was an early ALPA organizer. Those were the good old days.

Everything else is spot on and well said. Southwest and Jet Blue come to mind.
 
A while ago, a couple of college professors did a study and found that there was a highly positive correlation between companies that were on the "best companies to work for" list and stock performance.

Tells you something, huh?

Treat your employees well and make them want to come to work and go the extra mile for you and gee, think they might make a few customers or clients happy? Think they might make those people spend a little more money with you?

I don't know why more management "geniuses" don't get that.

Hell, John Tenney's still sucking up to Mesa management after getting some flowers from them many years ago.
 
If you look at the labor unions point of view, they claim that every year around the holidays, there are higher occurances of sick calls. It is just this year, management has spread things too thin, they had no way of covering the normal holiday sick calls.

Another thing that speaks volumes, apparently from some reports, you could not find any high level supervisor or management at any USAirways station for the three or four days around this mess. Seems to me that when things are at their busiest, you'd want more of these types, not less. I guess being home with the families instead of taking care of their customers was too important for the managers and supervisors.

Lastly, with all Airways management has done to it workforce - destroying pensions, slashing pay, cutting benefits, thousands of layoffs - that many of these people just decided that the job was no longer worth being away from family on holidays.
 
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A while ago, a couple of college professors did a study and found that there was a highly positive correlation between companies that were on the "best companies to work for" list and stock performance.

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When I first went to work for Delta I happened to go through Monroe LA and Delta's largest individual stock holder came on board. He took the time to welcome me as an employee and explain that if Delta employees and customers were happy that the stockholders would do well too. Of course he is dead, his family no longer holds Delta stock, and it's a different company.

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Treat your employees well and make them want to come to work and go the extra mile for you and gee, think they might make a few customers or clients happy? Think they might make those people spend a little more money with you?

I don't know why more management "geniuses" don't get that.

Hell, John Tenney's still sucking up to Mesa management after getting some flowers from them many years ago.

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Yes, but I learned a long time ago that morale was more linked to production than renumeration. That is, if you give the employees the ways and means to produce, they will be generally happy. You can pay them all you want, but if the job is miserable, if they can't produce a product, they won't be happy. The ultimate in morale crusher is to ask for more work while it is painfully obvious that the company won't make it. There is no purpose to the work then.

This is a challenge that many airlines probably can't overcome. Certainly not USAir, taken over by a cynical pension fund investor who has made it clear he doesn't care what happens to the company. United? The employees and management have been at cross purposes so long I don't know if they can be any other way.
Delta? There is a foundation to build on there, but we'll see.

But at viable companies everyone takes responsibility for the success of the enterprise. From the lowest jobs to the highest. You can't wait for somebody to come motivate you. You've got to make your little area work. If you don't, you can't blame anybody else if the whole thing fails. That's why these sickout tantrums don't help anything, they only hurt. And all the "reasons why" are just excuses for not doing your job.
 
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yes, they do have an obligation to transport people, however the power of the labor force must be felt.

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That's all well and good, just keep in mind that when labor takes it out on customers, as a way to get even with management, history shows nothing good comes of it. I remember a few years ago how every time I'd run into a United crew they would brag about their "Summer of Discontent" in which they caused so many cancellations. They were so proud. It was only a year or so later that they wished they could find any support from the public or politicians. In DC they had worn out their welcome since constituents were telling their representatives, "screw United and their unions and the horse they rode in on".

The customers are your business and your career. If you don't want the career just quit, don't screw up your customer's holidays. Just my 2 cents.

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I'd have to vote flyover's comments here as ones to really take to heart. It's not wise to bite the hand htat feeds you, regardless whether you're labor or management. Labor, doing what they did here, attacked management......but also wrote off the customers as "collateral damage". Short term, a message may have been sent. Long term, who knows the sympathy/support they might have had, or won't have anymore from the public.

It's the same thing as the guy who wrote Aspen Times article criticizing the service that Mesa management was providing at Denver airport. The article was a slam on management and a good ally to the pilots, until the pilots began "shooting at their ally" after taking his comments personally, and sent him all sorts of childish replies. After THOSE comments were printed about how the crews REALLY feel about the pax, does anyone here really believe the public now gives a rats ass about the lack of pay and QOL for those crews? If they even did in the first place, they sure don't now.
 
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Yes, but I learned a long time ago that morale was more linked to production than renumeration. That is, if you give the employees the ways and means to produce, they will be generally happy. You can pay them all you want, but if the job is miserable, if they can't produce a product, they won't be happy. The ultimate in morale crusher is to ask for more work while it is painfully obvious that the company won't make it. There is no purpose to the work then.

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Absolutely. All you have to do is look at United. They were the highest paid, got a contract that was beyond their wildest dreams! And yet, was labor happy with management? Uh uh.

Thing is, people want a little respect. Give that to them, and they'll take less pay. If you pay me a million dollars a year, but shaft me every single day that I show up to work, I'm going to quite after a year or two and say, take this job and shove it. Thanks for the money, now go to hell.

When I got laid off back in 2002, I went and started doing retail part time. Know what amazed me?

I got more respect as a seasonal sales associate than I did from the people at the job I lost. And I got about one fifth of the pay.

I can honestly say that I liked that low level retail job better than the one I lost. The proof is this -- even though I'm employed in a "real" job now, I'm still working there part time. The extra money is nice, but if I didn't like the people and how they treat me, I'd have been long gone. It's not that much.
 
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yes, they do have an obligation to transport people, however the power of the labor force must be felt.

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I guess you and I have fundamentally different views on how labor/mgmt issues should be resolved.

Plain and simple: The people who deliberately called in sick were 100% wrong to do this. Having seen the situation in the airports firsthand, this sickout really pissed off a lot of USAir's customers. Those customers (like me) are going to think twice when it comes time to fly again. Personally, I'm going to go out of my way to NOT fly USAir again, at least for my next few trips. This is my version of a "sickout" against USAir.

If the unions want to call attention to their plight then there are proper ways to do it. The most professional approach would have been to announce a strike publically. This way, at least the flying public could have been better prepared. Had I known about the sickout you can bet your last buck that I wouldn't have flown USAir this past weekend. I work in IT and outsourcing is the biggest threat/challenge to my job. I certainly can relate directly to the feelings of the baggage handlers, but this sickout stunt certainly doesn't gain them any sympathy from me.

Changing the subject slightly, I flew Southwest for the first time in November. I mostly fly USAir, some Delta, and occasionally NW and United. I could not see one bit of difference between USAir's "service" and Southwest's. I no longer believe in the whole legacy versus low cost carrier debate. All airlines are eventually going to be competing using the low cost model...
 
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Plain and simple: The people who deliberately called in sick were 100% wrong to do this.....this sickout really pissed off a lot of USAir's customers. Those customers (like me) are going to think twice when it comes time to fly again. Personally, I'm going to go out of my way to NOT fly USAir again, at least for my next few trips. This is my version of a "sickout" against USAir.

If the unions want to call attention to their plight then there are proper ways to do it. The most professional approach would have been to announce a strike publically. This way, at least the flying public could have been better prepared. Had I known about the sickout you can bet your last buck that I wouldn't have flown USAir this past weekend.

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Ditto. You are not the only one with this opinion. Actions like this at such a precarious time for US just assure that they will liqudate. They are slitting their own throats. Without pax, you have no airline and even their longtime brand loyal flyers are fed up. Screwing the public won't get them to fly your carrier.
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. I do understand what you are saying and I am not saying that it isnt a part of the industry but I think there comes a time in your career when the balance between your children/family and your job favors your family before it becomes too late to cash in on some of the priceless moments in life...if that makes sense

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I'll agree with that, but unfortunately their actions were not the answer. It's a pretty well known fact that people will be working almost every holiday in the airline industry, especially if they're lower in seniority. If the job is getting in the way of family time that is important, maybe it's time to switch careers. This is why a lot of people DON'T get into the airline industry. My wife and I have had numerous conversations about me missing holidays and birthdays. We've come to compromises that work out for both of us, so it's cool. It also helps that we celebrate "Christmas" on the 21st instead of the 25th.

Management has treated these people like absolute crap. Their wages keep getting cut, and I've heard some of them say they could make more money at Wal-Mart being greeters than working for US Air. There's an easier answer there. Leave US Air. There are actually people out there that WANT US Air to survive, and they are willing to take the pay cuts to do it. Now b/c these rampers got their panties in a twist, their pretty much taking everything everyone else has given and flushed it. I live by a simple philosophy. If you don't like what's going on in life, change it. Don't like your job? Find another one. If you feel you can make more money elsewhere or want to work for a company that treats their employees better, calling in sick to make a point really won't change anything.
 
Congratulations to all those whose negative attitudes will put 10,000+ people out on the street. I hope you have a happy new year and made a new years resolution to become a worse person than you already are. Hope none of you are members of the IAM because I guarantee that there are people that are personally seeing to law suits involving the last couple days' events and the IAM is going to lose everything. Who here thinks a ramp agent should make $55K a year? I'd like to hear why someone believes an uneducated position deserves more pay than an airline pilot.
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A while ago, a couple of college professors did a study and found that there was a highly positive correlation between companies that were on the "best companies to work for" list and stock performance.

Hell, John Tenney's still sucking up to Mesa management after getting some flowers from them many years ago.

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LOL I never talk to anyone there, and I have no need (unlike you) to "suck up" to any airline.

But oddly enough, Mesa's stock has performed very well since 9-11. (I purchased a thousand shares at 4.25 and it is now at 7.9) Kinda shoots a big hole in your theory doesn't it?
 
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Hell, John Tenney's still sucking up to Mesa management after getting some flowers from them many years ago.

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LOL I never talk to anyone there, and I have no need (unlike you) to "suck up" to any airline.

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I'm calling BS on this one. Someone keeps on talking about how he emails Ornstein and now expect me to believe that he doesn't talk to anyone there?

Or was that Giants Fan?
 
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Good for them. I know I'd be sick to my stomach too if I was getting treated like the employees of US Airways are being treated.

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Interesting comment...if you work for a regional you are being treated even worse than they are...you just don't realize it. Regional F/Os can't earn what a 5 year flight attendant makes at many airlines...sickening.
 
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Hell, John Tenney's still sucking up to Mesa management after getting some flowers from them many years ago.

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LOL I never talk to anyone there, and I have no need (unlike you) to "suck up" to any airline.

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I'm calling BS on this one. Someone keeps on talking about how he emails Ornstein and now expect me to believe that he doesn't talk to anyone there?

Or was that Giants Fan?

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No that was me but that was two years ago. I haven't heard from Johnny O in at least that long.
 
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usair+pan am+twa+midway+..............=History
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Let's not forget the union's involvement in the demise of Eastern... USAir is following this path as well.
 
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Let's not forget the union's involvement in the demise of Eastern... USAir is following this path as well.

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Uh, what?

Let's see, just how much were the salaries cut at US Airways?

But it's those damn unions again.

If unions are so bad, then tell me why Southwest is so profitable?

Oh, yeah, there's more proof of the treat your employees well and the stock will do well theory. Southwest treats their employees well and gee, what has their stock done?
 
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