"Management by Trust" at FLOPS

[993_Pilot]

There are many great sounding management philosophies in Kenn's book, and in a perfect world their application at Floptions would be great. But we don't live in a perfect world. We work in a world where men like Micheal Sh!thed can be our next CEO overnight and all the happy management platitudes go out the door and we are left to survive under the abusive management practices of of a sh!thead like M. Sh!thead.

So regardless of what you think about Kenn and his book our only insurance against future abusive management is a contract. If Kenn truly believes in what is in his book he should have no problem agreeing with what we are asking for in a contract. What Kenn, Sh!thead and every other CEO you might ask about a union contract does not want give up and tries so hard to preserve, is the total and unilateral power they have over us with out a contract. Until Kenn, or Silvertro sign that contract we are as exposed as we were the day that Sh!thead took over.

As far as trust goes as its talked about in Kenn's book between management and employees, again its a great goal for both sides of the labor equation to work toward. But for this environment to come about at Floptions there will have to be a house cleaning in management starting at the PSM level and working up. Especially the large/mid cabin PM. Our pilot group will never "trust" these men no matter how many warm and fuzzy things that Kenn hands out to us. They have lied repeatedly to us, attacked us again and again, and encouraged out right illegal operations. Trust will have to start with a new group of managers that do not have the distasteful history of our current managers.

Finally an OT response. Although I think he missed the mark the last time around on many things and his memory seems a bit foggy when he recollects the past, Kenn appears to be living up to the principles in his book so far. I hope this continues, but it doesn't keep me from wanting a CBA to protect us. He was removed from power once and it could easily happen again. I also agree that he can't leave the same operations managers in place and suddenly expect us to trust them. Southwest has a unionized pilot force, and they will bend over backwards, so unions and trust is not mutually exclusive.

As for BT, I hear that they moved his office into the hole where the old sim was. That must make him feel like a valuable "team member"!