|
May, 2015 RUPANEWS
The one time it did try to take on ALPA, in 1985, was a resounding failure.
CCS, on the other hand, was developed and refined in a non-union culture, that is to say a culture of “every
man to himself and the devil take the hindmost”. ALPA pilots for the most part fail to recognize that ALPA,
by design of the Railway Labor Act, is really an association of separate unions, and not a real national union
in the sense of having a common contract and common work rules across airlines. Thus, although ALPA had
been back on the Continental property since 2001, nine years prior to the merger, the CAL-ALPA contract
had pretty much nothing in the way of work rules and very few protections for its members, in total contrast
to the UAL-ALPA contract, and this is reflected in CCS.
The whole point of CCS is to wring the maximum possible amount of work out of each of its pilots, and to
go about this in a way that as much as possible prevents anyone from seeing contract violations and even, at
times, FAR violations. In fact, in the scab culture that had prevailed at Continental since 1983, this was
exactly what many Continental pilots wanted, as it allowed them to cut all sorts of deals with management,
often behind the backs of their fellow pilots, in order to make as much money as they could. This attitude
goes against everything UAL pilots had lived with throughout their careers, for decades. The UAL pilot
perspective was “we work to live”, whereas the CAL pilot perspective was “I live to work”—two tribes
speaking languages that are mutually incomprehensible.
Prior to the changeover from UNIMATIC to CCS, we legacy UAL pilots had already experienced quite a bit
of the “shoot first, ask questions later” Continental management style — useless iPads, unusable Boeing
SOPs that turned out to have been largely ignored by legacy Continental pilots, etc. — but our actual work
lives under UNIMATIC were for the most part the same as prior to the 2010 merger. Because of
UNIMATIC’s transparency we knew what our colleagues were doing, how much they were flying, how the
crew desk was handling irregularities, how they were assigning trips to reserves. But when the company
switched over to CCS we were gob-smacked by the full force of what the legacy Continental pilots had been
enduring.
Management’s promise that CCS would have all the same capabilities as UNIMATIC turned out to be a
complete lie. We could no longer see what our fellow pilots were doing, how much they were flying, how
the crew desk was handling irregularities, how they were assigning trips to reserves. In addition the new
“premium pay” features of the new contract were activated, such as 50% and 100% overrides for picking up
extra flying. It became “let’s make a deal” for everyone, with no accountability and no way to ensure that the
contract was being followed. Some pilots started pulling in vast sums of extra money, depending on how
quickly they figured out how to game the system. This, apparently, was the Continental way, because it
allowed management to get away with considerably fewer pilots. It’s much cheaper to have one pilot fly
50% more hours, even if he is being paid a 100% override, than to hire, train, and pay salary and benefits to
another pilot.
Not much has changed since the switch to CCS 15 months ago. ALPA has had a few improvements put into
place, for example the ability to see another pilot’s schedule, but there’s still no way to see someone else’s
audit trail, to see how much they are actually being paid. The inherent lack of transparency in CCS means
that it will never be able to replace UNIMATIC in an equitable manner. Management and ALPA know this,
but a replacement for CCS is apparently three to five years away, if ever.
The CCS debacle was just another in a long list of similar disasters: SHARES, payroll, employee travel—the
list goes on and on. According to ALPA, United Airlines has more than 900 distinct computer systems, and
only a handful communicate with each other, so it’s unrealistic to expect any improvement in the near future.
But the fact that the other recent airline mergers have gone so much better, in particular Delta’s merger with
Northwest, really indicates a failure at the top. The buck stops squarely on the desk of Jeffrey Smisek, who
after five years in power seems to have learned nothing about what leadership really means in the airline
industry, and is yet another example of “you can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much.” In
my opinion Smisek has to be shown the door in order for United Airlines to live up to the promises of the
2010 merger. Sadly there is no sign of this happening. —
Anonymous
28
May, 2015 RUPANEWS
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
