I was hired before the union was voted in, and the new contract was not ratified. You will have to tell me what the company did that I'm blaming the union for. I was very happy with the pay and benifits I had before the union. If not I would have not accepeted the job.
Then why did your colleagues ratify the agreement?
If it was a pay and benefits CUT, why the heck did the majority of your Dispatchers vote Yes?
Sounds like there's more to the story...
Forgot to add, the last airline I worked at dispatchers did almost twice as many flights, no acars so we had to chase down time, and order crew meals. Few 9E dispatchers have had to handle a work load like that and not at 9E.
I'd like to know where that was and when? If you're talking back during the 80's or early 90's, then sure.
It was easier on Dispatchers WITHOUT ACARS from a dispatcher work load standpoint unless WorldFlight died or something else went wrong. I did that as well here for 3 years before we went live with ACARS.
Double the amount of releases was probably a lot easier process without having constant SELCAL popping up on your computer interrupting you.
Different world, which is what it sounds like when you mention "crew meals"; those have been gone at every major carrier since the early 90's (and no Regional that I know of EVER had them) except for fractional operations which, again, don't require as much input from the Dispatcher as 121 ops.
Been there, done that for a few years at Flexjet where all we got was the Jepp paperwork (hardly ever even talked to your dispatcher) and did everything else ourselves.
According to the MEM FSDO, PCL Dispatchers, back in late 2005, were dispatching and tracking more aircraft than ANY other Part 121 operation in the U.S. Maybe that's changed (I hope so).
That was our POI's claim, not anything from the Union, Dispatchers, or Pilots, after a couple of pilots filed NASA forms and formal complaints with the FAA Regional Office in ATL trying to fix the dangerous practice of too few dispatchers to accurately track all their flights.
My favorite is having to divert because of a line of severe weather, getting nothing back from the Dispatcher via ACARS, the DTW repeater, or San Francisco Radio because he was covered up with all the other diverts, declaring the emergency, and going wherever the hell I thought was most suitable, then trying for 4 hours to get anyone on the phone, saying screw it and checking ourselves into a hotel and canceling the flight on the CA's authority when you're sitting on 14 hours of duty and no one's answering the phone.
If that happens, you know there's a problem, and it isn't the individual dispatchers who are, more often than not, perfectly capable of handling the situation if they weren't understaffed.
Long story short (too late): understaffing is management trying to cut costs.
Piss-poor pay and benefits is management trying to cut costs and the labor group LETTING them BY RATIFYING THE AGREEMENT.
No one to blame but management and the membership who agreed to the T.A. I'm sure you didn't sign it, but the majority of your coworkers did (otherwise it wouldn't exist and you'd have gone back to the negotiating table).
You can blame the "union" all you want, but they couldn't do it without THE MAJORITY OF PCL DISPATCHERS VOTING YES!
That's the RLA for you, and there's no other way to cut it.
