Glug, Glug, Glug.....That kool-aid must be spiked pretty good!
Trust and commitment….That’s funny! Ok, how do we have “trust and commitment” with SAPA in place? SAPA can’t, by the very function of the system, provide that. The system is a “dummy” system, an illusion, a mirage. All of the meetings and emails mean nothing…JA and co. can chose not to do a damn thing SAPA wants.
The “intangibles” that are provided by managements are provided in order to motivate their employees to be more productive. Increased productivity = Increased PROFITS.
SGU DOESN’T need to improve on those issues as readily as the first year pay. JA and the boys need people to come thru the front door.
As all the kool-aid drinkers are repeatedly saying, SKYW has a lot of “intangibles” that when added up, put us over the top in compensation and attractiveness to prospective employees.
Think about it, if SKYW has one of the best “workplaces” with all of these “intangibles” that people are looking for, then why are people not walking in the front door. The answer is straight forward - compensation in that first year.
Once here, most of us stay a while, which means "they" are doing some things right to keep a good deal of us here for a while.
Regionals for most are stepping stones. Attrition is attrition. The people that stay, stay for various reasons (financial, lifestyle, second or third career guys that won’t leave due to age and ability to get a decent salary and lifestyle with a major, etc). But overall the workforce is increasingly becoming those from the instructing ranks, generally younger, and those coming from other regionals. This will means that there will always be attrition.
If we reach attrition numbers such as Mesa, then that is when you might see a revisit of the rates. But, we have normal to slightly higher than normal attrition, but not unusual rates. We are trying to expand and grow. Thats the need.
If you are looking in from the board room, you want to cut or contain costs while maintaining and hopefully increasing size and scope of the business. JA and the boys can’t get people in the door. That is the big problem. The rest of it is normal occupational forces that either makes someone stay or leave. You have an at will situation and a pay agreement already in place with the pilots lasting until 2010.
Why change all of that? Why add to your expenses? Just raise first year pay, get people in, and if SKYW is “the place to work” as SGU promotes then shouldn’t the rest take care of itself? Once you have that employee in the door, all of the “feel good” stuff will make that employee stay.
Also…if the some of the most senior leave, taking their high salaries with them, and SGU is able to backfill the slots with $19.25ers then it is better financially. The incentive to keep raising pay for everyone is NOT there. Having to compete for contracts with majors means that “they” need to run it lean and mean.
And remember, just because you have “feel good” feelings from management and you really think that they care about you….they really don’t. Their job, is to maintain their job by making profits for the shareholders. If that means that they have to have some programs and incentives to make you “feel” valued and important – then that’s what they will do – they are doing what smart business owners realize. By making their employees “feel” important and valued - they will be more productive = MORE PROFITS! It's NOT altruistic. Those "feel good" things have a purpose.
History lesson......"Enron employed around 22,000 people (McLean & Elkind, 2003) and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of $111 billion in 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. It achieved infamy at the end of 2001, when it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained mostly by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption....
It was on the Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" list in 2000, and had offices that were, in hindsight, stunning in their opulence. Enron was hailed by many, including labor and the workforce, as an overall great company, praised for its large long-term pensions, benefits for its workers and extremely effective management until its exposure in corporate fraud....
"And.......Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (the other four are PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG), performing auditing, tax, and consulting services for large corporations. In 2002 the firm voluntarily surrendered its licenses to practice as Certified Public Accountants in the U.S. pending the result of prosecution by the Department of Justice over the firm's handling of the auditing of Enron, the energy corporation, resulting in the loss of 85,000 jobs
…Andersen, who headed the firm until his death in 1947, was a zealous supporter of high standards in the accounting industry. A stickler for honesty, he argued that accountants' responsibility was to investors, not their clients...
....For many years, Andersen's motto was "Think straight, talk straight."....
....Andersen(the company) also led the way in a number of areas of accounting standards. …
Predictably, Andersen(the company) struggled to balance the need to maintain its faithfulness to accounting standards with its clients' desire to maximise profits, particularly in the era of quarterly earnings reports. Andersen has been alleged to have been involved in the fraudulent accounting and auditing of Sunbeam Products, Waste Management, Inc., Asia Pulp and Paper, and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, WorldCom, as well as the infamous Enron case, among others....
.....For a time, WorldCom (WCOM) was the United States' second largest long distance phone company (AT&T was the largest). WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, most notably MCI Communications. …
....On July 21, 2002, WorldCom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the largest such filing in United States history....
(Wikipedia)
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