The ....NEW...United Air Lines....

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

(This sword has two edges.....it also prevents GA pilots from getting jobs that they view as long-term personal commitments temporarily obtained by airline guys that are hoping to be only temporary....and when the airline types go back to the airline the GA guys get the left-overs. In short, the entire industry suffers. I feel grateful to even have a job.)

George I've been dealing with this on and of since 9/11. Airline guys who need to pay bills sending resumes anywhere they think they may be able to pick ups some cash. Since a lot of them have had some helo stick time somewhere in their career and they feel they are well qualified to fly VFR at 300- 1/2 in NY or hover at 800 ft for an hour for that all important news story.

Not that many of them get hired or survive very log if they do but it sure hurts your bargaining position when the boss can't keep enough fax paper in the machine to handle the amount of resumes received from furloughed pilots who think they want my job.

[GAHorn]

Well, I must say that we probably shouldn't look at it like we do. That is to say, we probably shouldn't see things as "airline vs gen. av." or "military vs civil" pilots. Everyone has the right to look for work, and no one likes additional competition or any outside pressure for their current position. We should see ourselves and our fellow aviators as kin. As a ... Band of Brothers... (Of course, it's OK if WE look around...)
The real crux is the failure of big brother to address the larger issues in meaningful ways for the long-term good. (Instead of acting like a kid at a party scrambling for the pinata's goodies, and grabbing what they can grab while the grabbing's good.)
Let's face it, de-regulation didn't work. (I miss the old Eastern, National, TWA, Pan Am, Piedmont, Southern, Trans-Texas, Ozark, Capitol, Braniff,...and the way folks dressed and acted when travelling...airplanes with real meals and head-rest linens, men in fedora's and women in heels with nylon seams up the backs of their legs, cute hats, and lipstick. Kids that were dressed in their Sunday best, excited to fly and yet still polite. Sun-sets that blaze and burn and sear the sky, like bare white wolf-fangs that defy, the very gods..., uh, ..er,.. 'scuse me. Got lost there for a minute.)

[Walker]

[zero.one.victor]

I too am a proud union member (sheet metal workers), and the building trades unions seem to be headed down the same road, pricing ourselves out of the market. Our nemesis is the non-union sector, kinda like the low-cost carriers versus the big airlines. I for one would be happy just to maintain the status quo as far as wages & benefits go, but there's always others wanting the same sort of increases as in the past who want to blame "bad management" for the current situation. It ain't just management! I have seen the enemy, & it is us!
I think the major airlines ( and the union contractors work for) could really improve their places in today's markets if there was a 10% cut right across the board. And I mean EVERYONE, from the top executive down to the lowest janitor & everyone in between. But I doubt that'll happen, everyone is always willing to cut everyone's compensation but their own. Especially the owners and/or top brass. Just human nature I guess.
As I recall, this thread started with a gripe about drinking water-- somehow that doesn't seem so important now,in the face of the lay-off's & possible bankruptcies talked about on the TV news.

Eric

[GAHorn]

The post was actually about the short-sighted, selfish mentality of "executive" types with court-protected jobs who have a drinking fountain in the hall...but seem to care less about employee morale (which has more to do with pulling the airline out of bankruptcy than the cost of a bottle of water.)
Eric, glad to read you're a sheet metal member. Here's a story from the early 40's found while surfin' in search of real estate about a north texas tinner named Anderson. (Written by his son many years later.)

"Returning to Hardeman County after living in San Antonio and Beeville, Joe ANDERSON set up his own business. "After some shaky years, the young business took a unique direction. Joe ANDERSON mounted tools on a small truck and took this traveling shop from one cotton gin to another to fill on-the-spot needs for gin pipes and fittings. The precision service thus provided was something his competitors could not match, and the business grew." He was self educated, having learned the sheet metal business by correspondence courses ordered out of Pennsylvania. While he was self-educated, that does not mean he wasn't on top of things as they involved sheet metal work:
(Joe ANDERSON invented the cottonhouse valve system and held patent number 1995464 on it, the patent being issued "this twenty-sixth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fifty-ninth.")

His son wrote:
"An anecdote I like still better is the one about the time he and a young college-trained engineer were working together to estimate a (cotton) gin job and the engineer was showing signs of impatience with this uneducated old country tinner. They were calculating the new diameters required to carry the air and its load each time a smaller pipe teed into a main lane, thus requiring it become larger. (I suspect this was the collector line from a row of gin stands.) The engineer was using his slide rule to run 2pr2 on each, adding the two areas, and then solving for diameter from that Sq.area. Dad was coming up with the correct answer within a quarter of an inch tolerance a couple of seconds faster every time. The engineer finally asked, "How are you doing that?" Dad had been using a carpenter's square and a folding rule simply to measure across the hypotenuse of the two pipe sizes on his square to find the diameter that would yield the correct combined volume. The engineer scratched his head. Dad started, "You know, of course, the area is a function of the square, and..." The engineer grinned, looked embarrassed, mumbled, "OK, I see," then apologized for his earlier behavior."

"My 78-year-old father has been a private businessman - management - for 45 years. But about 50 years ago he was the president of the Sheet Metals Workers Local in San Antone. And when he took office, his members' wages were several years behind what had been accomplished in other Texas cities.
Well, with strike authorization in their pockets he and his committee woke up one morning to the noise of a terrific hailstorm - a rarity in San Antonio, and you shouldn't expect it during the 1968 convention. But they had their hailstorm, and they reasoned rightly that it had knocked out just about every tin roof in town, so they took their members out on the bricks that day. It took them nine weeks on the bricks, but they won.
San Antonio at that time shared with Chicago the reputation of being a great town for saloon-keeping alderman. And one of these aldermen - later a major of San Antone - approached my dad one day during the strike and said, "Joe, your members must be getting hungry."
And of course dad said, "They sure are."
And the alderman said, "Well, you know all you have to do to get the best free lunch in town is to buy a nickel beer in my saloon."
Dad said, "Well, alderman, some of my guys don't have a nickel."
And the saloonkeeper said:
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Joe, Starting tomorrow I'm going to have a man standing just inside the door of my saloon, and anybody who shows him a Sheet Metal Workers' card, my man's going to give him a nickel."
The old man himself once wrote: "San Antonio hasn't promised that kind of hospitality. But anyone who has ever bought a taco from a street vender or strolled along the banks of the San Antonio River knows what a town it is to know and to return to. "


Hope you enjoyed the story.-gh

[Mike Smith]

Well said George.

[taildrager]

There is an easy solution. Pilot to carry onboard a small propane powerd BBQ. Copilot to bring an ice chest with steak and a couple of bottles of beer, nice and cold. Lock the terrorist door good and tight. Enjoy inflight meal. Ask the cutest flight attendant to join you. Taildrager