They had to be for some of the cows that worked there. Still room with my fingers in between the waistband. Thank god for the Stairmaster.
LOL - ok, that's funny. Mine was a Size 2, but I've seen the ones you're referring to... especially these days.
Have to disagree with you about the pay scales, at least on the local level. I know our guys on full-time buy spend 10-12 hours a day in the office, and draw 100 hours of pay instead of 80-90 hours of credit the normal line pilot draws, and for the extra 10-20 hours of credit, they can KEEP the office job. WAY too much work for me, I'm a line pilot who likes to volunteer to help (although, after what I've been through, you'll be lucky if I ever volunteer for office again).
You said leadership comes first, then you state, someone... finally says... Who is someone? A Follower? A member? Who gave him/her the authority or credibility to lead?
Well, if they're leading, they're not following.
Yes, a member.
The membership who FOLLOWS that person gives them the authority to lead. The credibility,,, well, that Leader has to SHOW that or no one will follow them.
Why would they be willing to give up there time? What do they perceive to gain from it? Where in union history is it shown? Only in strikes... but day to day common participation is not historical or common.
And therein lies the problem. You say the followership is the problem (and I agree), but you acknowledge that day-to-day common participation is one of those problems in the followership. That has to change, and ALPA needs to figure out how.
It was the being in ops and circulating reading material. Message boards might have opened up the communication, but the deal was closed in face to face human contact: the LEC meeting.
Nope, it wasn't sealed in ops, I wasn't there that much (maybe 2 or 3 times). Circulating the reading material helped, but it was the debate on the message boards that continues to be the deal-closer in current elections. More people read those than you think.
The SRSRC committee looked at that..... there are legal issues.
What about voting... can you provide a valid reason why pilots don't vote? It takes 60 secs from ANY phone or computer to vote for LEC reps. I have never heard a valid reason for voter apathy.
My personal opinion is that about 1/3 of the pilots often don't KNOW there are votes going on. Those that do, if things are going acceptably well, don't really care WHO is representing them, they only care when things are going BADLY, so as long as the status quo is acceptable, many of those who pay attention will only vote if they happen to think about it.
I'm not saying I agree with it (obviously I don't, I vote in EVERY election I'm eligible for), but that seems to be what I come up with when I talk to pilots.
I agree with much of what Rez is saying here, but one area I do disagree with him is the effectiveness of web boards. I think Lear70 is absolutely right that they can be incredibly effective, and far too many ALPA leaders don't understand the value. Everyone discounts the web board as being "the crack pipe," or something similar, but the truth is that even though only a small group of pilots post, a huge percentage of the membership lurks and reads. By addressing the concerns of the militants that usually reside on the web boards, you go a long way in educating the rest of the members and bringing people together.
Yes, the attorneys hate the web boards, but this is one of those few areas where I tell them to f--- off.
BINGO! Give that man a cigar.
