Dunno. I've spent the past six months watching my son work out with the Marine Corps (he reports to SAN in August). Doesn't matter if it's a gunny or the guys who have been in the delayed entry program for a couple months -- they have no problem cleaning up their own messes before it becomes a problem that an officer needs to deal with...
Perhaps what AA really needs is to fire all the existing supervisors, throw out the requirement for an A&P in management, and hire a couple hundred former Marines to take their places.
Throw out the A&P requirement? Thats an FAA requirement, but do as you like, imagine the games we could play if they had non-A&Ps calling the shots in a maintenance operation! Even UPS keeps their Maintenance workers seperate from the rest of the operation. One of my contacts there told me about an overzeolous station manager at UPS who wanted to make the Mechs accomplish other tasks in between trips and remove the lock from their ready room. One phone call-not to the Union but to maintenece control and the manager backed off.
Marines, (usually a Marine will tell you there is no such thing as a "former Marine", ask your son next year when he is out of boot camp) well we have quite a few amongst our ranks, but to apply those methods, which are designed to work on individuals without a fully developed frontal lobe (late teens early 20s) on a seasoned workforce would more than likely result in a fragging than a hazing.
We had a Marine go into management a while back, he was fired by the company after trying to employ such tactics on the workforce. Mechanics are highly individualistic, perhaps if we werent we would be better off, so most will not accept punishment in the name of another and most wont buy the arguement of from a supervisor of "blame him for what
I am doing to you". We currently have another one, he hasnt reached retirement yet and he is learning that his observations of the core dont apply here where "lets make a deal" is more effective than attempting to intimidate and coerce by punishing the group for the actions of an individual. You have to remember that the focus of our job is problem solving, thinking, not just obeying orders from people who make the decisions. We enjoy a level of lattitude in our jobs that many dont and our licenses make us answerable to the FAA before the company. We can and are expected to disobey a direct order if it puts our license at risk. I recall going to Crandalls road shows where people from other departments would complain about Maintenence being unproductive, Crandalls response "If my planes are ready I have no problem with that, NEXT QUESTION".
One thing you dont seem to realize is that we have plenty of operations where we have no management on site for much of the time. Boston management will manage PHL and EWR from Boston, theres one supervisor for EWR and no supervisor for PHL, if the guys need management they call Boston, they dont report to anybody on the field except to get a signature on a grievance.
The mindset of mechanics is "You hired him, you take care of it, dont expect us to clean up your mess".
Crandall has been remembered as an effective airline manager, another effective airline manager, Gordon Bethune wrote in his book, you dont want to piss off your mechanics because if you do you wont get your airplane, he will work on it but he wont fix it, and there isnt much you can do about it". We are pretty much there, pissed off, you may cite they still getting their airplanes but that can change with just a little spark or that last little piece of straw. You have to remember that an airplane on the ground is more work for us, not less. Even aircraft that arent in use require maintenance.
With each passing day of concessions the standard for a SLUG becomes lower and lower as the regular workers become less and less enthused about their jobs.
