2014 Fleet Service Discussion

[cltrat]

Tuesday: OMA, LAX, MCO, JFK, PHL, IAD, ORD
Wednesday: DEN, IAH, SFO [ticketing local], DTW
Thursday: LAS, IAH [ticketing local], OKC, SLC
 
First week: 15 out of 47 locals

interesting after thursday the tone may be set with those stations voting

 

[Tim Nelson]

interesting after thursday the tone may be set with those stations voting

I'd like to leave the first week with at least a 750 vote lead.  First week is about 50% of the entire membership.

 

[WeAAsles]

Hopefully your members vote in the most qualified and honest candidates, not people who really aren't doing this for them but for there own self interests mostly.

 

[Tim Nelson]

Hopefully your members vote in the most qualified and honest candidates, not people who really aren't doing this for them but for there own self interests mostly.

We both agree to that.  Finally, something we can agree on.

 

[ograc]

I'd like to leave the first week with at least a 750 vote lead.  First week is about 50% of the entire membership.

Surely you would have and should have stated " I would like to see the membership supporting the UNFC team, leaving the first week, by at least a 750 vote margin." Stating "I'd like to leave the first week with at least a 750 vote lead." lends credence to the accusations that you are not in this for the betterment of the membership or the advancement of your team. Your statement lends credence to the accusations you are, and always have been, in it for yourself. It lends credence to the accusations that you are running with a predominant UA team, hoping to cash in on the unfortunate dissention on the UA side. Your statement lends credence to your focus on membership numbers and where the potential votes are. Placing inexperienced, yet popular candidates from PHL and PHX on your team to garner votes on the US side. Politics at it's best. Effective political strategy? I'll give you that. A strategy in the best interest of the membership? The members will decide.

 

[mike33]

Couldn't have said it better cargo !!   I / Me / I...........

 

[700UW]

http://www.iam141.org/docs/MessengerMay2014.pdf

 

[WeAAsles]

Well guys it seems Tim put most of his eggs on here in this basket. What did those members who read this page and vote learned? Will this strategy pay off for Tim or not?

Tick tock, Tick tock.

 

[roabilly]

Surely you would have and should have stated " I would like to see the membership supporting the UNFC team, leaving the first week, by at least a 750 vote margin." Stating "I'd like to leave the first week with at least a 750 vote lead." lends credence to the accusations that you are not in this for the betterment of the membership or the advancement of your team. Your statement lends credence to the accusations you are, and always have been, in it for yourself. It lends credence to the accusations that you are running with a predominant UA team, hoping to cash in on the unfortunate dissention on the UA side. Your statement lends credence to your focus on membership numbers and where the potential votes are. Placing inexperienced, yet popular candidates from PHL and PHX on your team to garner votes on the US side. Politics at it's best. Effective political strategy? I'll give you that. A strategy in the best interest of the membership? The members will decide.

 Cargo,
 
Truer words have never been spoken... I just hope the Membership makes  a collective, informed, and intelligent choice!

 

[WeAAsles]

http://www.iam141.org/docs/MessengerMay2014.pdf

This was an excellent posting 700. Thank you for sharing this. It put's items that have been discussed on this page into full view and clarity. It also dispels many of the false accusations that have attempted to be sold more than likely for purely political purposes.

Kudos to your union for this and it should be read by everyone participating in this forum.

 

[Tim Nelson]

Surely you would have and should have stated " I would like to see the membership supporting the UNFC team, leaving the first week, by at least a 750 vote margin." Stating "I'd like to leave the first week with at least a 750 vote lead." lends credence to the accusations that you are not in this for the betterment of the membership or the advancement of your team. Your statement lends credence to the accusations you are, and always have been, in it for yourself. It lends credence to the accusations that you are running with a predominant UA team, hoping to cash in on the unfortunate dissention on the UA side. Your statement lends credence to your focus on membership numbers and where the potential votes are. Placing inexperienced, yet popular candidates from PHL and PHX on your team to garner votes on the US side. Politics at it's best. Effective political strategy? I'll give you that. A strategy in the best interest of the membership? The members will decide.

Conversation was between me and Cltrat.  And yes, I'd like to have a 750 vote lead going into the second week.  You and the other Delaney pollyannas taking down fleet service over the past several years can parse every little word you want but it won't bring back the craft that you and those you support have destroyed over the past 6 years.  We must rebuild this house and that starts with change. Eventually you will have to retire or be a part of it.  Sorry.

 

[ChockJockey]

I have had the opportunity to work in PHX and on the east side of the country and the difference between pre-merger US and HP stations is night and day. PHX lacked equipment on their gates. Push tags had to be shared amongst gates. No bag tugs to pull the tail carts to the aircraft - they had to be pulled by hand. In the morning before flights came in crews had to search as far as the hangar for tugs, towbars, chocks... If the crew had to use the restroom or go to the breakroom one member of the crew had to stay on the gate for guard duty - to make sure no one stole the equipment off the gate. In my discussions with people from PHX nothing has changed.

 
PHX has changed significantly - probably not dramatically - but significantly since you left, by which time I was already working t(here).  I do remember the atmosphere being like you described when I started and we were told the ramp was losing about three people a day, mostly because folks couldn't deal with the heat and the work environment.  As a new-hire brought on at a higher wage than a lot of the HP were making having been there for years, they took a lot of their anger out against the new people.
 
There are more carts now; used to be if you ran morning conx/abr and you had a later start time you were screwed but during complexes 3-4 it can be hard finding open carts.  There are more bag tugs but oftentimes they're scattered, especially if they don't make it to the fuel line the night before or if the mechanics grab them for night taxis.  Since local bag runners are now dispatched and assigned tugs, the gate rig can stay at the gate for moving carts.  After LAS was cut down a lot of the GSE came down to PHX.
 
Our management insists that the total number of push tugs equals or exceeds the number of gates but typically there's 2-5 of them down for repair/mx at any given time. There are also about 6-7 tugs that are for end gates only but people don't like using them and so half will sit unused while some gates end up having to borrow/share (since you'll get an ESON for pushing with a Hough on A22 [unless you're about to take a delay, then they'll pretend not to notice]).
 
As far as people having to stand guard over equipment and such, the stories that I heard from PHL transfers and even a news article I'd read at the time made it sound like this was a much larger problem in PHL for a while than it ever was in PHX.
 

In PRez's defense, this is all considered normal in PHX and he probably doesn't know that this is NOT how things are done elsewhere. And loading and unloading bins by yourself? That won't happen here. They'll look at you like you fell out of a tree.

 
Most of that is by choice.  There are still a lot of people who for whatever reason insist on going solo.  If that crabby 65 year old wants the aft bin to himself he can have it, if my jumping up there is only going to piss him off for the rest of the day.
 

Another shocking aspect of PHX compared to the east is the amount of physical altercations and the behavior of employees against one another. IIRC there was a time period in which we were having at least one fight per week. Several of my coworkers were terminated for fighting. Good people but stressed by management to the point where they would explode. BOOM. Here out east I don't know of any fights. It's unheard of. But to PHX this is NORMAL.

 
Fighting in the form of physical altercation is not normal here by any means.  It has happened, but it's quite rare.  The last two incidents that I can recall involved the same guy and he's since been long gone.  Sometimes people get into shouting matches, especially as the thermometer creeps up, but I'd be skeptical if someone told me those kinds of things don't happen in PHL or CLT either.
 

The way people communicate to one another in PHX is not normal. People you don't even know will just come up to you, scream in your face and call you every nasty name in the book.

 
I remember when things like that would happen, and usually it had something to do with equipment.  There used to be a lot more pressure on people as well; this was back when there were still things as "quickturns" and bags were regularly being loaded during and after pushback.  I took a lot of crap from people, most of them leads, and often for trifling reasons.  I think about those people and now they're either gone, no longer leads (and thus nicer), or have mellowed out a lot.  Some people couldn't deal with the stress, and sadly some people actually seemed to thrive on the spite and negativity.  In regards to how people communicate on a day to day basis it's much improved from your description.
 

Managers who stay in their office and don't "help" on the ramp.

 
I haven't seen this in quite some time.  The last time I did it was the BMU manager taking a couple of bags to expedite with a golf cart; he was recently fired for something unrelated...suffice it to say he was a touchy-feely kinda guy.  Some people don't seem to mind the "help" but I'll go out of my way to confront any managers I see trying to do ramp work.  There are also fewer managers walking the ramp now than there would have been 6-7 years ago, when, at the time there were such thing as "TA" managers that were supervisors one day and team leads the next and thus used to doing ramp work.

 

[ChockJockey]

 
Yeah, assuming I don't get a bin full of wheels facing out or the handles lying flat on the floor... JFK, LAX, ORD and PIT are becoming the worse in that respect.  Assuming the "stack" isn't more akin to a pile or mound in the bins.

 
On Mexico and Canada inbounds I expect the bags to be backwards.  If they're stacked as such then I won't be scanning them in the bin if it's just me.
 

In fairness, PHX sends us some doozies. Transfer bags buried behind locals and stacked at the very back of the fwd bin of a 321... Glass houses and all...

 
Yep.  I can't control how other stations stack and load.  It's all got to come off anyway, and if I'm running bags I get off the gate when I get off the gate. I don't stress it, I just work at a pace until the job is done.

 

[rockit2]

I'm certainly glad to see this forum take a break from the personal attacks... I ask Josh, Bluto, Rockit, and Nelson to please refrain the political mudslinging and grandstanding. The election numbers should be set in stone by now, so such behavior won't garner, or lose you any votes either way...
 
To the N/C... hang in there, and don't let the negativity spewing like venom from a few anonymous posters on here sway your focus...
 

If you can't handle the truth or the reality of the way it is, don't comment.

 

[rockit2]

Wonder how the turn out has been today?