Not that I’m against teamwork, but having pilots clean up the cabin after a flight sends a very confusing signal to the rest of the employees/workforce. It also does not look good to the passengers. It cheapens the profession and makes it seem that it is more important to pick up trash than completing a thorough preflight and briefing.
The pilot’s are traditionally the highest paid labor on the property and managements will go to great lengths to encourage the continued denigration of our profession. They love to see and hear about pilots to see picking up trash.
Are we professionals or not? Do you see your management’s picking up the trash or mopping the floors on a daily basis? Moreover, the F/A’s soon start to expect it and if the next guy doesn’t do it, then he’s the jerk. Also, where does it end? At level-off when the work load dies down, do we go back and help with service. Do we let F/A’s help program the FMC’s. Do we let F/A’s do our walk-arounds? You know, it’s all in the name of team work.
At Southwest it is a very different atmosphere than at the rest of the legacies. Herb has it built-in to your culture that everyone helps and that have proved very successful over the years. The LUV pilots are paid quite handsomely for their extra efforts. Meanwhile, it vastly different for the abused labor force at the legacies where pay is down and moral is in the gutter. Management wants a “one size fits all” policy for all its labor.
If the pilot profession is to get back to its rightful place, we must differentiate ourselves from the F/A’s and cleaners. Herb may be down throwing bags a couple of times a year, but you sure as hell don’t see him doing every day. Here at American, management’s mission is to treat everyone from the janitor up to the pilots the same way – same benefits, profit sharing, etc. It’s our job to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Look at it this way; in the long run we are not pulling up the other employees as much as they are pulling us down to theirs. Do we see ourselves merely as computer operators or someone that is solely responsible for hundreds of lives when we are up in the air? Believe me, it’s an institutional question for all of us. The pay is vastly different between the two. Need I say how management views the pilot force?
AA767AV8TOR
