NetJets Strike Passes By 93%

[flyfysh]

They were hired to run this company, safely and efficiently while still being good stewards of our owners money (remember...the people that allow us to receive a paycheck??)

Safely? Well that is pretty well up to us as pilots. We are ultimately responsible for that. I have always said that we have the best pilots in the industry hands down.

Efficiently? Yep thats their gig. No need to comment on how they are doing that. Imagine how efficient they could be if they did not have to spend the majority of their time jumping through hoops trying to figure out what was going to satisfy us. Unfortunately there is a small group of us that will never be satisfied and have made this negotiation their own personal vendetta.

I for one, give them credit for that because if it were me, I would not have subjected myself to this abuse past day one.

If I was being paid what they are you could put me on one of those "dunk tanks" and throw softballs at me. Can't knock them for what they are being paid- we are negotiating our pay, maybe they negotiated theirs.


How would you like it if they got on this board and defamed you as blatantly as you do them?

I defamed them? Are you lumping me in with all these other posters? I went back and read my post again. I am giving my opinion of the DVD and the recurrent speeches. Are you an employee? HAve you seen the DVD? Have you been through a recurrent? My bad, maybe I did unintentionally lump you in the same category. Yes I am an employee,yes I did see the DVD and yes I have been through a recurrent.


Treat others as you would like to be treated. Didn't your Mother ever tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say...don't say anything at all...

You said it not me. You better go talk to their mothers, not mine. Its OK for them to degrade us with their speeches and DVD's, but if we respond we are degrading them and are bad people? It is not okay for them to degrade us- that works both ways and as I have posted before..respect is earned not given. We want adult pay, we need to start acting like adults then.

You need to go look in the mirror, You have something on you nose.
Since you seem to have an answer for everything, tell me how posting on an anonymous board, sharing what I think is an honest view is considered "brown nosing"? Those people don't know me from Adam...neither do you. Look to your left...how do you know I am not your PIC? Look to your right...how do you know I am not your SIC?

There, now I'm being degrading

Yawn...this is starting to get old.

 

[Semore Butts]

Flyfysh

You could be on my left. I'm sure as professionals we would get along fine.

I can go back and rebuff all your comments, and you can rebuff mine and so on.

4 years later we will still be rebuffing each other. It would be a hell of a big post though.

I can now respect your opinion because you actually are an employee.

Please respect mine, wether you agree with it or not.

Save to say, I don't agree with yours.

 

[FamilyGuy]

Family Guy

I actually like your intellectual arguments and I feel that you're very sincere in your convictions, but you're straying...again.

Are you really interested whether my baby can afford a new pair of shoes, or do you want to just, "do the right thing" for a bunch of fat cats.

I received a very long and well delivered page today on my company pager and really, I thought it was well written and showed us the gravity of the situation. The fact that you know that its happening is a relief to many of us. Some of us thought you genuinely didn't care!

Hawkered - there's a lot of us here that care. Just check with anyone that's been here for more than 3-4 years...we wouldnt have invested this much of our lives if we didnt believe in the company, its people, and our owners. We remember what it took to bring the company to its current level and we still believe, despite the current problems, that this company has a lot of good years ahead of it.

American Airlines had one of the worlds hardest leaders, but he was loved..and hated at the same time. Robert Crandall fought for the dominance of the silver bird in Washington, and with route structure, ETOPS economics and even sports advertising. If you would ask any American pilot that remembered life under him, they'd probably give some reference to their own anatomy as personal sacrifice to have him back, just to recapture those wonder years.

Netjets doesn't have leadership right now that shows that kind of conviction. They seem to clock in and clock out, and not really even care. Let me explain:- You've been working a problem at a remote airport in Montana all day long with maintenance control, it's the third plane you've been on for the tour that's broken down, passengers are coming in an hour. The MEL covers the problem and both crew members agree that it's safe to take the 'plane. You call an Assistant Chief Pilot and tell him you're good to go. He doesn't know anything about the problem, doesn't understood the MEL and hasn't even been briefed by the arm chair warrior that just left his air-conditioned confines.

Is our leadership perfect? NO. Is the pilot group perfect? NO. I've worked for a lot of companies over the years and I know that there isnt a perfect one out there. They all have their flaws.

I can always look around and see problems that need to be fixed. As I've said before a good number of them are attributable to the huge growth we had over the last 6-8 years....that's a good problem to have.

Is there dead weight and leadership that lacks conviction? In some cases, yes. But I see this problem on both sides of the management-union equation. The one qualifier I would put on that statement is that I've seen a much more concerted effort since Boisture came onboard to remove many of the managers that are not very effective in their jobs. Bash him all you want, but he is holding the managers accountable for performance in their areas of responsiblity. Has anyone else been watching how many managers have changed since he came onboard?

You get what you pay for!! You have to pay a pilot that can show up for work and know that his wife has a car with a working set of brakes and an engine that won't let go. You have to pay a pilot that can afford the insurance deductibles for life's unfortunate events that take us by surprise. You have to pay a pilot so that s/he can afford a retirement outside of the government sponsered ponzi scheme called Social Security and you have to grow the team with all the fan fare of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders at the closing moments of a fourth quarter tie-breaking field goal!!!

I agree - you need to pay pilots and all employees a fair wage so they can take care of what's important in their lives - their families. So what's that magical number? The article in the Columbus Dispatch said that NJA pilots average $50-$72k. What income level is necessary to secure the items you cited? How far away is the company offer from that level?

Thats what leadership is!! It's not "telling", it's not lecturing, it's not coming up with great new ideas...it's about treating people the way you would like to be treated and not taking personal offence to peoples' personality quirks, or even their own unique beliefs. It's about tolerance, patience, the ability to make an example of others through the actions of oneself, and the ability to practice one's craft better than most, at the same time, remaining humble!!

God knows..I fail at this myself, but you are being paid to be great Family Guy, and for that money, we all expect greatness.

This is where we start to differ hawkered....your point is very eloquent and while I agree with the overall message, I dont think your point goes far enough. This attitude and philosophy doesnt apply just to managers, its applies to everyone at NetJets. Everyone should be adhering to these principals.

I believe that we are all being paid to be great. Think about it....how many people are going to get hired if they come in saying "I want to be average", or "My goal is to be mediocre". I'll bet that everyone that interviewed and was hired promised to do their very best if they were hired here. Now that they are in what are they doing? If they are doing anything less than that then they should go somewhere else.

What good is it coming up with "financials" when we are being charged 50 bucks for a quart of oil in Westchester? Or seeing orders for our aircraft running off to Europe? How can you equate the cost of a sell-off, when the majority of those are to our sister company EJM?

If I carry a wallet and I change the pocket from one side of my butt-cheeks to the other, have I just cost myself its contents, or did I just double my fortunes? Thats how stupid it looks when we show up to White Plains!!

Hawkered - I respect most of your points but I think you're going astray on these financial issues. I posted the following almost two months ago after seeing other references to the $50 oil in HPN. I dont know what the going rate for a quart of oil is, but I dont think EJM is getting rich off this. One other point that I thought of after I posted this....what's driving the cost of oil to $50? Its certainly not the product, but could it be the A&P's time to come out and put it in the aircraft? If so, is this an opportunity to save by having the flight crew put the oil in?

#2 - I've seen so many references to this oil thing in HPN that I decided to do a little research. It looks like we did about 7000 flights into HPN last year. If every single flight took a quart of oil (unlikely, IMO) then at most EJM would generate $350,000 in revenue (not profit), given the claimed price of $50/qt.

This seems like a lot, but then I asked a simple question....what does it cost to run our facility in HPN? What's the total cost, when we start thinking about wages for staff, utilities, insurance, mortgage (or lease) cost, etc? I dont know what that cost is, but I dont think it would be cheap in New York.

The next question is how many things can NetJets charge for to try and recoup all those expenses?

I dont know the answer to all these questions, but after thinking about it, I dont think EJM is making much money, if any, at HPN.!!

As for the sell-offs to EJM....be careful that you dont make the mistake of assuming that the dollars for the sell-off go to EJM. EJM doesnt own the aircraft - other people do and have EJM manage the aircraft for them. When NetJets sells off to EJM it still has to pay a competitive rate to the aircraft owners for the use of the aircraft. If they didnt pay a competitive rate the owners would choose someone other than EJM to manage the aircraft. So those dollars do not go to EJM - they go to the aircraft owners, which does reduce the overall profitability of NetJets....

Family Guy, have the strength of your own convictions to be honest and fair in your dealings. Do not be sideswiped by corporate immorality or tongue twisted into arguments with people that piss you off on these forums.

I try to live up to this everyday hawker. I hope that everyone else out there does the same.

 

[FamilyGuy]

Originally Posted by FamilyGuy


WRONG AGAIN. Actually teachers are the highest unionized group of workers in the country. Aviation does have a high percentage of workers who are unionized though. The entire transportation industry is around 25%. You can get more data on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site here:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm




​

Teachers yes but teachers are not part of the private sector.




For the most part Public sector can not compare directly to private sector in that public sector is not as subject to globalization and immigration effects on employment and so forth.

Evidently you havent been in a high school or college recently....there are a lot of foreigners teaching in all the schools these days...

 

[FamilyGuy]

Family, have you seen the DVD that BB sent out to the pilots? I wish you could if you haven't.

BB tries to talk to us like he's grandpa and he just caught his grandchild stealing a cookie.

(Bad Johhny, you don't need more money son, Grandpa knows whats best for you, your kids are better working at a factory or fast food place anyway, they don't deserve to go to college. Vacations are a pain anyway, if you can't afford to go on one it will be better anyway)

Not much of a way to talk to a group that flies multi million dollar clients in multi million dollar aircraft all over the planet.

When I saw the , video I was just north of Bagdad, and had just been through a mortar attack. My point is, we been a round a time or 2. I know the difference between Chicken salad and Chicken sh&t.

BB explained in his "business 101" class the "Y" factor being the available amount of money the company could pay the pilots. He explained that the target profit was not being reached and therefore the company could not pay us more. Well, as I understand it from the business 101 that I took, salary is part of business cost, not profits.

So, I'm not buyin it, and I don't think by brethren is either.

BB is a politician, so is magee. You look at them and say bullsh*t, they ignore you and continue with their bs as if it is gospel.

That is why we say nothing (my opinion). What point would it serve. They are getting paid by what they can take from the mouthes of our families.

Well there it is as far as I'm concerned.

If it wasn't so truly degrading, it would have probably been funny.

Semore - I havent seen the DVD, so I cant comment on how Boisture came across in the presentation. Regardless of how it was perceived, I would be surprised if he was going for the "grandpa who just caught his grandchild stealing a cookie" profile.

As for the Business 101 class that I sat through...you are correct Salary is not a component of profit. Salaries are an expense, which as I'm sure we all remember, does factor into the overall equation ---

Revenues minus Expenses equals Profits.

This is the same equation that most legacy carriers have been struggling with for 4 years now....

While it would be nice to follow some of the advice I've seen posted on these boards and ignore expenses (pilots cost X, if they cant pay it STFD), companies that lose sight of the overall goal - profits - are destined to have a very short life. An outcome I dont think any of us truly want.

 

[Semore Butts]

Family

As you just said, you haven't seen the DVD, so it's pretty hard to say he didn't come of like the "grandfather" (my opinion Family, you know, we served our country so we can all have that right).

As you well know, I do not agree with the STMD philosophy.

 

[Hawkered]

Family Guy,

A very long and thought out response to the concerns I raised. I look forward to working with you guys up to the contract and beyond.

Sincerely,

Hawkered

 

[CRAWDADDY]

Get real and get over it. There was no solid proof. Nothing the ethics investigators found. No paper trail. So there was nothing! They did it all legal and by the book, just like a DNIF or writing up an aircrafct to make sure it is in optimum condition. They didn't do anything more than many of you NJ pilots are doing now, just in a different way. So what is your beef? Get over it!

Investigators my foot! The company investigated itself, what do you expect? The company would have liked to have seen the same outcome when the Untouchable Trio got the boot but someone outsmarted them and tipped off the feds first. Otherwise, they'd still be here!!

So, no they didn't do anything illegal and nothing has changed.

 

[TheBigMan]

Where can one find a copy of the "PLEDGE" ?

Another positive step for a group of pilots that have been waiting for a long, long time. Fly The Pledge, my brothers!

 

[ghostrider64]

It's pretty easy, don't fly tired, hungry or sick. Don't carry discrepancies, ever, no matter the inconvenience caused.