Find 3 acronyms here
FOPA – Flight Options Pilot Association – (2005) – name given to a proposed in-house union at Options. Anti-union sentiment (in the form of Anti-Teamsters sentiment) was propagated and this half-hearted announcement was emailed, via the company-issued Blackberry, to every pilot. No actions were taken against the pilot(s) who wrote and/or emailed the anonymous proposal, even after statements issued by management specifically prohibited the use of company issued Blackberries for union-related emails. A few days later, the Word attachment to the email revealed the author of the proposal to be a company ground instructor. The discredited FOPA proposal immediately became known as the “faux pas”.
(Faux pas – French literature - false setup / a social blunder; error in etiquette; tactless act or remark - from Webster’s New World College Dictionary).
There’s more to this story:
Do an internet search on the Teamsters and you could pretty easily come up with links to the mob and corruption and violence: The Teamsters are not without their faults. Next however (and in all fairness), do a search on the LAPD, or the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party, or Hollywood, or the US Government and you can find similar stories. The point: No organization is without fault. But, if you don’t want a union on property, deflect your negativity towards the popular Teamsters. Say, “It’s not that we don't want a union; we just don’t like the Teamsters. We think they’re icky and not in YOUR best interest!”
(That’s the part I like the best: management telling me what they think is in my best interest. DILLIGAF! – Do I Look Like I Give A F--- !)
But be sure to offer the alternative of an in-house union. Yes, there are a couple that work…… A couple - each individually with thousands of dues paying members. Without the financial support, an in-house is impotent and nothing more than a puppet. (Do a quick search on this forum and you’ll get all the reasons why an in-house is doomed from its inception.)
The FOPA “contract” was ridiculously short. It had some flashy titles and a couple paragraphs that sounded legally binding, but compared to the 30 section, 221 page Netjets contract, the proposal was, well, ludicrous. A thorough, well-worded, and legally binding contract is just as important as the financial support.
Finally, the author or propagator of the FOPA email: He was a pilot/ground instructor at Options and had recently returned to the company after (what I believe was) a life-threatening traffic accident: i.e. lots of hospital bills and time off recovering.
I admit I don’t know most of the details surrounding his accident or even his own personal life and conduct. What I believe (and take this as conjecture only) is this: He may have felt empathy towards Options because of his experience and he may have felt he was acting with good intentions. He most likely was not writing alone and he was probably coached into writing and soliciting the faux pas email.
If you want to learn how middle managers, program managers, supervisors, and instructors are coached, read a chapter called “World Airways” from CUB – Confessions of a Union Buster – Martin Levitt’s 1993 book about his years as a “labor relations management consultant”.
“But then I explained how it worked, how we wouldn’t hold back, we would just make department managers and supervisors do it for us. Then the cruel smiles appeared. That was even better. Let them rape each other.” Levitt, Martin Jay. Confessions of a Union Buster. Crown Publisher, Inc., New York, 1993, p. 94.
