CAL EWR B737
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2005
- Posts
- 652
ALPA: The Pilots Union
[cid:[email protected]]
“I am concerned that some recent communications from a minority of pilots have been crafted with the expressed and avowed intent of moving us away from what has proved to be a mutually beneficial relationship over the past 15 years. — Captain Fred Abbott in the July 2009 issue of the Flight Operations Update.
Thank you, Captain Abbott, for your solid endorsement of our LC 170 communications. We intend to use every means at our disposal, including our communications program, to move as far away as possible from this “mutually beneficial relationship” with management.There is a standing joke that circulates among our pilots: “I’ve had all the dignity and respect I can stand.” Perhaps we should add to it: “I’ve had all the mutually beneficial relationships with management I can stand, too.
”This week’s Magenta Line is late for a reason. We knew our lead item was going to break this week and we wanted to be able to fully report on it. Thanks for your understanding and patience.
Due to the special MEC meeting next week, there will be no Magenta Line on Wednesday. We will get it out as quickly as we possibly can once we have digested the week’s events.
Item 1: The Scarlet Letters
The Scarlet Letters are FUPM and, although we wear them, they do not shame us, they shame the management team whose avarice has forced them upon us.Most of us are familiar with the Lauren Barra-Berzon case. Around her wrist she wore a scarlet bracelet—and her Captain that day didn’t like it. He confronted her in the cockpit as she was performing her pre-flight duties. And her story begins.
Management got involved, of course—assistant chief pilot Mike Bowers. While the facts were clear at the time, they have since been altered, reshaped, and extruded from the EWR chief pilot’s office in the form of a letter Friday from Captain Bowers to First Officer Barra-Berzon.
Captain Bowers’ letter, sounding suspiciously as if it came from some other level of flight operations management, has reshaped “the facts” a bit—what we read in this letter is not what occurred but what management wished had occurred. Captain Bowers insists that First Officer Barra-Berzon removed herself from the trip and refused to fly another to replace it. He hints at additional insubordination, as though First Officer Barra-Berzon just couldn’t be bothered to fly that day and that somehow she alone was responsible for the petty squabble that resulted.When she left the cockpit in search of Bowers, she found him in the terminal heading her way. Captain Bowers told her that she had not been removed from the trip—Bowers said he was going to try to “work on the issue”. Bowers had a 50-50 chance of getting it right—but chose the zero-percent option instead.
Our union was involved in this from almost the first moment—she called a union representative shortly after her removal from the airplane—and what actually happened was, and is today, fresh in their minds.
A hearing was held a couple of weeks after the incident in Bowers’ office and the letter generated by management as a result was delivered Friday. Management cut First Officer Barra-Berzon loose and laid the responsibility on her and in her seat on the right side of the airplane. Their story is that it was her who caused the problem by refusing “an unusual request from the Captain” and “escalated what was a relatively minor conflict into a much larger issue”—and that she should lose her pay for the trip. And that is what management has ordered. It does not matter that precedence has been broken just for First Officer Barra-Berzon; two prior cases very similar to this one were resolved in favor of the First Officers.
The difference in First Officer Barra-Berzon’s case is that neither of these other cases involved the scarlet bracelet.Management likes to send signals—when they’re not all-out trampling on us. The signal here is that Captains who see things management’s way and remove the scarlet bracelets from their cockpits will be backed by the full bad-faith and poor credit of the chief pilot’s office. And any recalcitrant First Officer will be ordered to Houston to sit through a useless “mediated debrief by the Human Factors team” to “help” them “cope with situations such as this in the future”.
It’s a very Orwellian concept—punish the victim; maybe she won’t report it next time.First Officer Barra-Berzon is a fighter. So are her EWR representatives. If she chooses to continue the fight she will be backed by the full weight of ALPA and her EWR representatives. Tyranny never stands for long; the point is always reached when the victims get tired of holding that status.The battle is on, we have joined, and we will win.
[cid:[email protected]]
“I am concerned that some recent communications from a minority of pilots have been crafted with the expressed and avowed intent of moving us away from what has proved to be a mutually beneficial relationship over the past 15 years. — Captain Fred Abbott in the July 2009 issue of the Flight Operations Update.
Thank you, Captain Abbott, for your solid endorsement of our LC 170 communications. We intend to use every means at our disposal, including our communications program, to move as far away as possible from this “mutually beneficial relationship” with management.There is a standing joke that circulates among our pilots: “I’ve had all the dignity and respect I can stand.” Perhaps we should add to it: “I’ve had all the mutually beneficial relationships with management I can stand, too.
”This week’s Magenta Line is late for a reason. We knew our lead item was going to break this week and we wanted to be able to fully report on it. Thanks for your understanding and patience.
Due to the special MEC meeting next week, there will be no Magenta Line on Wednesday. We will get it out as quickly as we possibly can once we have digested the week’s events.
Item 1: The Scarlet Letters
The Scarlet Letters are FUPM and, although we wear them, they do not shame us, they shame the management team whose avarice has forced them upon us.Most of us are familiar with the Lauren Barra-Berzon case. Around her wrist she wore a scarlet bracelet—and her Captain that day didn’t like it. He confronted her in the cockpit as she was performing her pre-flight duties. And her story begins.
Management got involved, of course—assistant chief pilot Mike Bowers. While the facts were clear at the time, they have since been altered, reshaped, and extruded from the EWR chief pilot’s office in the form of a letter Friday from Captain Bowers to First Officer Barra-Berzon.
Captain Bowers’ letter, sounding suspiciously as if it came from some other level of flight operations management, has reshaped “the facts” a bit—what we read in this letter is not what occurred but what management wished had occurred. Captain Bowers insists that First Officer Barra-Berzon removed herself from the trip and refused to fly another to replace it. He hints at additional insubordination, as though First Officer Barra-Berzon just couldn’t be bothered to fly that day and that somehow she alone was responsible for the petty squabble that resulted.When she left the cockpit in search of Bowers, she found him in the terminal heading her way. Captain Bowers told her that she had not been removed from the trip—Bowers said he was going to try to “work on the issue”. Bowers had a 50-50 chance of getting it right—but chose the zero-percent option instead.
Our union was involved in this from almost the first moment—she called a union representative shortly after her removal from the airplane—and what actually happened was, and is today, fresh in their minds.
A hearing was held a couple of weeks after the incident in Bowers’ office and the letter generated by management as a result was delivered Friday. Management cut First Officer Barra-Berzon loose and laid the responsibility on her and in her seat on the right side of the airplane. Their story is that it was her who caused the problem by refusing “an unusual request from the Captain” and “escalated what was a relatively minor conflict into a much larger issue”—and that she should lose her pay for the trip. And that is what management has ordered. It does not matter that precedence has been broken just for First Officer Barra-Berzon; two prior cases very similar to this one were resolved in favor of the First Officers.
The difference in First Officer Barra-Berzon’s case is that neither of these other cases involved the scarlet bracelet.Management likes to send signals—when they’re not all-out trampling on us. The signal here is that Captains who see things management’s way and remove the scarlet bracelets from their cockpits will be backed by the full bad-faith and poor credit of the chief pilot’s office. And any recalcitrant First Officer will be ordered to Houston to sit through a useless “mediated debrief by the Human Factors team” to “help” them “cope with situations such as this in the future”.
It’s a very Orwellian concept—punish the victim; maybe she won’t report it next time.First Officer Barra-Berzon is a fighter. So are her EWR representatives. If she chooses to continue the fight she will be backed by the full weight of ALPA and her EWR representatives. Tyranny never stands for long; the point is always reached when the victims get tired of holding that status.The battle is on, we have joined, and we will win.