Company Failed To Plan

[BoeingBoy]

I just don't understand how this managment gets away with absolutely no blame for this horrific disaster this weekend. Even being prepared for weather problems did not prove adequate.

[post="232536"][/post]​

The media I can understand - the company puts out a message and the media runs with it. That affects public opinion (like the CNBC poll).

The unions whose workers were blamed? Frankly, the only thing I saw till today was CYA - "It wasn't organized". Only late today did the union side get any other message in the media.

Some things were out of management's control...

Running out of de-icing fluid at several midwest stations, and we weren't the only airline that did. That stops flights there as long as snow, sleet, or freezing rain is falling.

AMR put a MD-80 in the mud at RIC on, I believe, Thursday. Unfortunately it was where the ends of the only 2 runways with ILS's meet so closed both of them. No equip at the airport to move the plane - last I saw on it was that the airport was effectively closed for 6 hours and counting.

From media reports, the wind exceeded the crosswind limits at PHL for a while either Thursday or Friday (don't remember which now). I got caught in that once before - sure throws a monkey wrench in that operation.

That's just the list of things I caught in the media as the whole mess occured. None much under management control, but none the fault of the employees either.

From my perspective, the biggies under management control.....

Short staffing to begin with on the ramp and CSA made at least some disruption all but inevitable once the weather went sour and incidents like those listed above occured.

The RJ's that are our salvation, though any time there's weather they're weight restricted - how was that weather Thursday and Friday, by the way? On a normal day, the slack can be taken up by later flights - on heavy travel days like Thursday/Friday it can't.

And finally, the sick calls didn't help.

Jim

 

[pitguy74]

I personally do not believe that this was a "planned" sick out. From the numbers, it was just a handful more then last year. By no means do I believe that it is OK to call in sick during any holiday, but if anyone should have used or thought of the word "planned", it should have been management. Did U not layoff more of it's workforce since Dec 03? Hello!! Less Employees to scramble for this holiday season spells out a disaster even with those numbers (Dec-03 vs. Dec04). This “meltdownâ€￾ should have been no surprise to MGT. Even if the numbers were less then Dec 03 (sick calls), this holiday season would have been no different.

 

[Smoke and Mirrors]

I just don't understand how this managment gets away with absolutely no blame for this horrific disaster this weekend.

We didn't abuse our sick time this weekend. I blame the ramp agents and flight attendants that abused their sick time.

 

[tadjr]

What I find amazing and stupid is no preplanning of overtime shifts. They were scrambling (begging actually) people to stay when they knew ahead of time there was no one to work. They could have even upgraded people for a week or 2 to cover things. We have 5 or 6 people out on medical that arent covered and have had 3 or 4 people quit recently. Their lines are listed as TBA each day meaning hopefully we'll get someone to work it instead of just giving someone a full time shift in advance. We have 4 lines that havent been covered since the current bid took effect back in November. We didnt get approval for staffing so our schedule includes 4 open lines all just happen to be night shift counter lines so on some nights there are only 2 or 3 people scheduled to work if nothing happens. Why werent people given the hours in advance knowing a holiday was approaching and the loads would be heavy? Once everything heads south not many people are going to subject themselves to coming in when they already are off, but a little preplanning and CYA in advance would have helped. If PHL was as short as we were this past weekend its no wonder a couple sick calls messed things up so much. Even now, there has been no offer to add hours to our shifts to help get things back under control. If you want the hours you're welcome to stay extra, but no mention of a permanent (even temporary) adjustment to hours. You just gotta wonder whats going on. Maybe the manager is close to his yearly $ budget and cant afford the hours or else he'll lose his bonus money. 😉

 

[EyeInTheSky]

Let's take a look at some of the numbers posted. PIT's 304 we will round down to 300 and Jim's number of 1,800 scheduled. this will be most favorable for the F/A's. Even with this rounding we have an absentee rate of 20% or put another way ONE FIFTH of the scheduled work force decided to say F&#K IT!

If you take the regular sick out rate of 100 against the lower number of 1,675 it is STILL 30% over what is accepted in the private sector non union environment.

So there is no way to justify these actions.

[post="232569"][/post]​

Piney to compare an inflight job to a ground job is just dumb on your part. You fly enough to know that it's just not the most healthy thing to do to one's body on a regular basis. A pressurized sardine can full of germs is bound to have more problems than the office cubicle crowd.

 

[PITbull]

We didn't abuse our sick time this weekend. I blame the ramp agents and flight attendants that abused their sick time.

[post="232558"][/post]​

No Smokey, management did not abuse their sick time...THEY WERE ON VACATION, ALL OF SENIOR MANAGMENT!!!!! And YOUR holidays are paid.

 

[PITbull]

Let's take a look at some of the numbers posted. PIT's 304 we will round down to 300 and Jim's number of 1,800 scheduled. this will be most favorable for the F/A's. Even with this rounding we have an absentee rate of 20% or put another way ONE FIFTH of the scheduled work force decided to say F&#K IT!

If you take the regular sick out rate of 100 against the lower number of 1,675 it is STILL 30% over what is accepted in the private sector non union environment.

So there is no way to justify these actions.

[post="232569"][/post]​

Private sector? Non-union environment...MOST OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS OFF ON XMAS, EVEN WENDY'S AND MCDONALDS.

Our employees in this industry work every single holiday, specifically the junior work force that can't hold any days near the holidays off in any year.

I'm not trying to defend the minority that abuse sick...but we have a senior work force that do have illnesses, and chronic ones.

Myself, I have managed to acquire 2 conditions this year. First diseases ever in my life time, physical illnesses related (according to my doctor) work related stress!!!!

Endoscopy performed today and diagnosed today with 'reflux disease" and prenicious anemia associated with gastric disease preventing the absorption of B12. in May, diagnosed with Hypothyroidism. An autoimune disorder which destroys the thyroid. In 2001 had my labs done in October and NO SUCH DISORDERS.

My doctors advice..."get out of this company, and get a life".

There is so much stress in the U employees work life, it is effecting their personal lives. How I know this? I hear about it every single damn day after 9/11.

Will they leave...as soon as the proposal ratifies and the company offers their two incentives in our proposal.


No, my friend, there is no such orchestrated sick out here at U. F/as waiting to ratify a contract to leave the company with something. Then U can hire a new workforce to destroy.

Hopefully, and God willing U makes it.

 

[lizjames]

The media I can understand - the company puts out a message and the media runs with it. That affects public opinion (like the CNBC poll).

I never post here, but I would like to note that Joe Brancatelli of JoeSentMe.com was apparently in Philadelphia on Sunday checking out the situation himself and sent a special Email to his members. He DID NOT buy the company line. He reported that the company CLAIMED the sick-call numbers were up.

So don't tar all the media with one brush. There are at least some media types who don't slavishly report whatever mgmt says as gospel truth.

 

[hp_fa]

Piney to compare an inflight job to a ground job is just dumb on your part. You fly enough to know that it's just not the most healthy thing to do to one's body on a regular basis. A pressurized sardine can full of germs is bound to have more problems than the office cubicle crowd.

[post="232571"][/post]​

Bob:

Eye is correct. Flight crews canot work with any form of sickeness because of the unique environel we call the office.

Sneezing at work in an office building is bad enough. SAs a flight attendant if you sneeze on someone's food, drink or even near their personal space they will be very unhappy.

Got a broken toe, leg, arm or finger? Sure you can go to a normal job like that. You can't be like that and be a flight attendant. You need to be able to eveacuate the plane in 90 seconds. You also need to handle any possiblr cabin emergency during flight.

I suspect that you are really upset that your preferred carrier may be dying in front of you. I suspect you are worried about the mileage you have accumulated for use for fun times.

 

[Justaramper]

Piney Bob...
Being "sick" is many things at USAirways, it can be surgery, FMLA, OJI, actually being sick or a death in the family. Sick = not being at work {absent}, so those numbers may be inflated.

Yes, we are short staffed beacuse of "sick", but also retirements, terminations and resignations. My terminal begins the day at 20 short each shift {ramp}, so add the absent worker, the holidays and people are wanting to be with family, there is a typical shortage.

Now add some bad weather into the days and all hell breaks loose. I worked for people on the 24th and 25th, but by doing so, I wasn't available for the extra overtime.

Murphys Law may have applied to this situation, more than you can imagine..

 

[usfliboi]

PIT Sorry to hear about your condition, Id do what the Doctor says, if you wanna be better... my question is, if things are sooo bad, and Wendys offers holidays off, why dont those people go to WENDYS?

 

[FM2436]

BTW, New Year's eve is this coming Friday night. How many are expected to show up for work and how many can the company plan to call in sick?

 

[BoeingBoy]

I never post here, but I would like to note that Joe Brancatelli of JoeSentMe.com was apparently in Philadelphia on Sunday checking out the situation himself and sent a special Email to his members. He DID NOT buy the company line. He reported that the company CLAIMED the sick-call numbers were up.

So don't tar all the media with one brush. There are at least some media types who don't slavishly report whatever mgmt says as gospel truth.

[post="232577"][/post]​

My apologies since you are very correct. Just saw that piece today. I should have said that the vast majority of the media runs with it.

Jim

 

[BoeingBoy]

Let's take a look at some of the numbers posted. PIT's 304 we will round down to 300 and Jim's number of 1,800 scheduled. this will be most favorable for the F/A's. Even with this rounding we have an absentee rate of 20% or put another way ONE FIFTH of the scheduled work force decided to say F&#K IT!

If you take the regular sick out rate of 100 against the lower number of 1,675 it is STILL 30% over what is accepted in the private sector non union environment.

So there is no way to justify these actions.

[post="232569"][/post]​

Bob,

You've made a very simple mistake in logic, aside from missing a number or two. I said at least 1800 F/A's would be working on a given day but thought the actual number would be between 2000 and 2200.

For the lapse in logic, you assume flight crew jobs are just like any other job out there. No, I'm not talking about the stress and environment. I'm talking about the way the job is staffed.

Your typical office job - 5 days a week - has 100% of the workers scheduled to be there on any given day. So your "typical" 5% sick rate would be 260 absenses from a 5200 person work force (the number of F/A's we have). Using that standard, the sick rate here was 5.8% - not far from your "acceptable".

Even 7 day a week jobs would have 70-80% of the workers on duty any given day. For a work group of 5200 employees, that's 3650 or more. 300 out equals 8.2% - still not that far from your "acceptable", especially when you consider that many of those other 7 day a week jobs reduce staffing to absolute minimum on holidays like Christmas - meaning a higher % of the "normal" complement of workers are not there.

Perhaps a more enlightening approach would be to concentrate on the number of available reserve F/A's who worked over the holidays - was it 100%? If not, why not - the workers to fill the vacant positions were there but not used. Whose fault would that be?

Jim

 

[crushed]

Us says staffing levels "back to normal".
Well guess what....in PHL "normal" didn't cut it!
When you get kicked in the nuts everyday you welcome an oppertunity to stay home with your family. That's how it is....no organized sick out. period.
I worked all week...yes, I got my ass handed to me.....no, I don't blame those who stayed home.
60 days ago 50 full time agents in PHL put in for retirement on or before the 1st of the year.
Since then the company has hired 2...yes 2... part timers.
At least 5 agents gave their two week notice this month...they were ALL told to turn in ther IDs that day...they were not needed for the next two weeks.
I have worked 20 xmas days and I will tell you that the sick calls on the ramp in PHL were up slightly more that other xmas days. Were they double? No. Were they unexpected? No. Were they planned for? No.
If we were properly staffed in PHL to begin with we could have absorbed the sick calls instead we are below minimums EVERY day and it came to a head this week.
CCY needs to wake up and take responsiblity for the mess they created! While on paper a 2.5 people per plane staffing model might look ideal......in real life there is no .5 person!