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On 9/3/2002 9
46 PM AOG-N-IT wrote:
(4) Allow flexible work schedules..abolish the 8 hour day in favor or 10 or 12 hour days. This will make the benefit of working for an airline more appealing again.
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There is a reason why police, nurses, firemen and other critical 24x7 operations use compressed workweeks Its a shame that our management and union leadership can't put down the crackpipe for a minute and give up on the 8 hour shift.
There are many advantages for a compressed work week from a business standpoint. First, it is more manpower efficient. You need less people to cover more time. Second, you have less hands in the pot. This is especially relevant to maintenance, meaning that you have more continuity throughout more of the day. Third, with each shift turnover, you lose an hour of production, as one shift shuts down, closes up their paperwork, turns it in and washes up. The next shift has their crew meeting, picks up their paperwork, moves out to their work area, figures out what is going on and then gets started.
Working 12 hour shifts, rotating three and four days off, is the best way to go. Every employee, regardless of seniority has a weekend day off; plus, with the long weekends, people don't need to abuse sick time to get time off for important things outside of work. When you must work 24x7, the compressed work week is the most humane way of doing it.
I've emailed just about every VP and Dave himself about the compressed work week. Honestly, for us not to consider this, just shows the thickheadedness of our management team and union leadership - who oppose anything new, even when IT WORKS, SAVES the COMPANY MONEY and MAKES EMPLOYEES HAPPY. Sometimes I think that doing anything that might make employees happy, violates the entire ethos of our management, though. I encourage people to raise hell about this, though. Maybe someone will see the light.
