Lear70
JAFFO
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2003
- Posts
- 7,487
Sure. Arbitration is done, briefs are in, now it's just waiting on the arbitrator to rule.
Back in June of '07 AirTran and the NPA (in-house union at the time) inked a T.A. and it was published to the pilot group. The union over-stated the gains and dramatically understated the concessions and didn't even print it for the membership, but distributed it on CD-ROM only.
I was on probation and had a hard time reading hundreds of pages on my computer so I went down to Kinkos and printed it and started comparing it to current book, finding the glaring omissions and outright mis-statements from union officials to the pilots. I anonymously published an anti-T.A. paper labeled "Reasons to vote NO" and distributed it on my website. It spread pretty quickly, and the union got lamblasted at road shows, and they yanked it before we could vote on it to "tweak" it. My whole premise was "Return to the table, as our current book is better than this proposed T.A." Not burn it down, not anything hostile, just "Vote No."
I got off probation within a week of that and one of my coworkers from my previous airline who was very pro-company outed my identity to management. The union approached me and asked me to join the NPA at the table as part of the "president's advisory board" for negotiations. I went up there and it was a monumental waste of time; they weren't looking to fix it, just get me to shut up. Didn't work, and we killed T.A. 2 soundly, for much the same reasons.
A month later I injured my shoulder at work and went out on OJI for almost a month. The company had me followed the entire time by a Private Investigator. They found nothing until almost the very end, just a week before returning to work, I did some minor work on my car trying to sell it (changed a tire and bent over the engine under the hood). They used it to fire me without even asking me any details about it. Interestingly enough, they terminated me right before the vote on T.A. 2, wrote a 3 page termination letter (they're usually short, this one was obviously hell-bent on defaming me), and PUBLISHED the termination letter in operations in multiple copies for the pilot group to read before I even had a copy of it myself.
The T.A. still died, the pilot group recalled nearly ALL the leadership at the NPA, and the process started all over again. The only job I could get was at Kalitta, although the jetBlue people were VERY nice and still interviewed me - in their words "We've never seen a termination letter this hostile and we've been doing pilot interviews here and before jetBlue for over 20 years. We'd love to hire you but can't with this termination letter on your record." Kudos to them for at least interviewing me, great group of people.
AirTran also fired one other pilot that day (unrelated issue but still union-oriented) and has fired 3 other pilots and suspended nearly a dozen for union issues (wearing of uniforms to legal picketing events, etc). AirTran had, in the past, always allowed termination grievances to go to the front of the line, realizing that a pilot's ENTIRE CAREER was at stake. They suddenly refused to do that with ours, so we languished 2 1/2 years before we could even get to the grievance arbitration.
That delay worked in my favor, as my shoulder wasn't right, and wouldn't heal up, so I went to my own doctors. They found that I had torn my shoulder pretty severely, and it needed surgery. So I had time to fight my Unemployment Claim - won that on base claim and the company's appeal, and my Worker's Compensation lawsuit which the company settled and gave me back EVERYTHING I was entitled to under Worker's Comp, basically admitting it was an injury. I just got back to work after being out 7 months having that shoulder surgery.
They still, however, somehow contended that they still thought I had committed fraud and that there was no injury. Even after 5 Orthopedic Surgeons independently verified it, including 2 that were "neutrals" appointed by the Georgia Worker's Compensation Board.
Interestingly enough, during discovery under the Work Comp case, which we wouldn't have been able to do if the company had moved quickly for arbitration, we found that the company started to fire me BEFORE my initial discipline hearing on the issue. This is EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN in the RLA. They have to present you with the charges and allow you the chance to defend yourself; they didn't, the paperwork starting my termination actually began the day BEFORE my initial hearing, and we have that in writing. Kolski (V.P.) actually told my union rep BEFORE the meeting that they were going to fire me. Again, they can't do that, they have to withhold judgment until they have your meeting.
The whole thing is ludicrous, it's pretty obvious what they did, but the union labeled me and others as "contract hostages", the pilot group stepped up to form and vote in with member ratification a Flight Pay Loss fund, then ALPA took over Flight Pay Loss for me when we voted in ALPA. If not, I'd have lost my house and everything else. Even so, I've been working a job away from home 21 days a month, it cost me my marriage (wife couldn't take the time away after 2 years), and I will, in all likelihood, never work at a major airline again because of this, unless the arbitrator awards me my job back at AirTran and, even then, I could likely never go anywhere else.
My only consolation is that, because of my actions, the pilot group had the knowledge and the tools they needed to kill those concessionary T.A.'s, subsequently bringing ALPA on property, and now look to be on track to obtain a contract that gets us out of being next to last in compensation, making AirTran a place worth spending a career at. I'm proud of my fellow pilots for working hard to make that happen, and look forward to getting back to work and getting my life back.
Back in June of '07 AirTran and the NPA (in-house union at the time) inked a T.A. and it was published to the pilot group. The union over-stated the gains and dramatically understated the concessions and didn't even print it for the membership, but distributed it on CD-ROM only.
I was on probation and had a hard time reading hundreds of pages on my computer so I went down to Kinkos and printed it and started comparing it to current book, finding the glaring omissions and outright mis-statements from union officials to the pilots. I anonymously published an anti-T.A. paper labeled "Reasons to vote NO" and distributed it on my website. It spread pretty quickly, and the union got lamblasted at road shows, and they yanked it before we could vote on it to "tweak" it. My whole premise was "Return to the table, as our current book is better than this proposed T.A." Not burn it down, not anything hostile, just "Vote No."
I got off probation within a week of that and one of my coworkers from my previous airline who was very pro-company outed my identity to management. The union approached me and asked me to join the NPA at the table as part of the "president's advisory board" for negotiations. I went up there and it was a monumental waste of time; they weren't looking to fix it, just get me to shut up. Didn't work, and we killed T.A. 2 soundly, for much the same reasons.
A month later I injured my shoulder at work and went out on OJI for almost a month. The company had me followed the entire time by a Private Investigator. They found nothing until almost the very end, just a week before returning to work, I did some minor work on my car trying to sell it (changed a tire and bent over the engine under the hood). They used it to fire me without even asking me any details about it. Interestingly enough, they terminated me right before the vote on T.A. 2, wrote a 3 page termination letter (they're usually short, this one was obviously hell-bent on defaming me), and PUBLISHED the termination letter in operations in multiple copies for the pilot group to read before I even had a copy of it myself.
The T.A. still died, the pilot group recalled nearly ALL the leadership at the NPA, and the process started all over again. The only job I could get was at Kalitta, although the jetBlue people were VERY nice and still interviewed me - in their words "We've never seen a termination letter this hostile and we've been doing pilot interviews here and before jetBlue for over 20 years. We'd love to hire you but can't with this termination letter on your record." Kudos to them for at least interviewing me, great group of people.
AirTran also fired one other pilot that day (unrelated issue but still union-oriented) and has fired 3 other pilots and suspended nearly a dozen for union issues (wearing of uniforms to legal picketing events, etc). AirTran had, in the past, always allowed termination grievances to go to the front of the line, realizing that a pilot's ENTIRE CAREER was at stake. They suddenly refused to do that with ours, so we languished 2 1/2 years before we could even get to the grievance arbitration.
That delay worked in my favor, as my shoulder wasn't right, and wouldn't heal up, so I went to my own doctors. They found that I had torn my shoulder pretty severely, and it needed surgery. So I had time to fight my Unemployment Claim - won that on base claim and the company's appeal, and my Worker's Compensation lawsuit which the company settled and gave me back EVERYTHING I was entitled to under Worker's Comp, basically admitting it was an injury. I just got back to work after being out 7 months having that shoulder surgery.
They still, however, somehow contended that they still thought I had committed fraud and that there was no injury. Even after 5 Orthopedic Surgeons independently verified it, including 2 that were "neutrals" appointed by the Georgia Worker's Compensation Board.
Interestingly enough, during discovery under the Work Comp case, which we wouldn't have been able to do if the company had moved quickly for arbitration, we found that the company started to fire me BEFORE my initial discipline hearing on the issue. This is EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN in the RLA. They have to present you with the charges and allow you the chance to defend yourself; they didn't, the paperwork starting my termination actually began the day BEFORE my initial hearing, and we have that in writing. Kolski (V.P.) actually told my union rep BEFORE the meeting that they were going to fire me. Again, they can't do that, they have to withhold judgment until they have your meeting.
The whole thing is ludicrous, it's pretty obvious what they did, but the union labeled me and others as "contract hostages", the pilot group stepped up to form and vote in with member ratification a Flight Pay Loss fund, then ALPA took over Flight Pay Loss for me when we voted in ALPA. If not, I'd have lost my house and everything else. Even so, I've been working a job away from home 21 days a month, it cost me my marriage (wife couldn't take the time away after 2 years), and I will, in all likelihood, never work at a major airline again because of this, unless the arbitrator awards me my job back at AirTran and, even then, I could likely never go anywhere else.
My only consolation is that, because of my actions, the pilot group had the knowledge and the tools they needed to kill those concessionary T.A.'s, subsequently bringing ALPA on property, and now look to be on track to obtain a contract that gets us out of being next to last in compensation, making AirTran a place worth spending a career at. I'm proud of my fellow pilots for working hard to make that happen, and look forward to getting back to work and getting my life back.
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