NWA losing Scabs

[PRINCESS KIDAGAKASH]

One of these days Finman you're gonna get fired because you're too close to retirement,the company outsources your job to china for a dollar a day or another management bootlicker stabs you in the back to get your job. You'll find out how and why unions were formed. The airlines are unionized for a reason and ones that aren't unionized soon will be.

 

[finman]

1) One of these days Finman you're gonna get fired because you're too close to retirement,
2) the company outsources your job to china for a dollar a day or
3) another management bootlicker stabs you in the back to get your job.

1) Why? You do realize that there are non-discriminatory labor laws that apply to all employees (not just unions), and that a person can't be fired without just cause, especially when age is a potential factor.

2) If my skills were so lacking that I could be replaced for a dollar a day, then I think I'd probably shoot myself. Thankfully, I was raised to be self-sufficient, which means casting aside any "victim mentality" that you apparently embrace.

3) I don't even know what this means, and apparently you have very little familiarity with the structure and progression of management employees. Poeple in management generally don't stay in the same job their whole life. I've had 4 positions in the 5 years I've been at NWA, so you don't need to stab someone in the back to get their job. You just wait until they get promoted or leave, and then you get their job on your own merits/experience. Crazy concept, eh.

 

[local 12 proud]

HEY FINMAN, THE ***DAMN COFFEE POT IS EMPTY AGAIN!

HOP TO IT LACKEY :blink:

 

[PRINCESS KIDAGAKASH]

#1 Rules were made to be broken and corporate America breaks this rule all the time with hardly any consequences.

#2 Better buy yourself a gun and some bullets. Anybody can push a pencil and you will soon be outsourced.

#3 So,you stabbed several other people in the back to get your present suckass position. Better watch behind you finman. The next knife might be yours. What goes around, comes around.

 

[finman]

#3 So,you stabbed several other people in the back to get your present suckass position. Better watch behind you finman. The next knife might be yours. What goes around, comes around.

No, just worked my ars off and moved into positions as they came open, 2 times via a promotion and once via a lateral move. That's the wonderful thing about "at-will" employment; you don't need to backstab anybody to get where you want to be.

Also, you expose your extreme ignorance of what someone in a financial analsys role actually does when you use the meaningless "pencil pusher" idiom. That's about as bad as a previous poster that thought an accountant just "counted" things.

 

[finman]

Yeah finman ask all those workers in Flint, Allentown, PA, PIT who were "Protected" by unions just how secure they were?

Or the roughly 500,000 union jobs that were automated out of existance? How did unions protect those?

Why do you think they are coming after Airline unions? The percentage of people at TOS is to high to effectively compete. I Labor abandoned the archiac and productivity draining seniority system and replace it with one based on merit you might see such union busting tactics as you see today.

Job losses that are driven by automation are an unfortunate but necessary part of a growing economy. I'm sure you're familiar with the economic concept of "efficient use of scarce resources" that drives productivity gains in our economy. Naturally, in order for this to work, employees need to be able to quickly adapt to the changing demands of the economy, and possibly change careers or industries as needed.

Honestly, a merit system in a very large workforce where everybody does essentially the same thing would be very difficult to administer and would probably create more problems of equity than it solves. It works in managament because generally the work groups are very small and the funcional work areas require different skill levels. For a pilot, for example, you've got 5000 guys that may have nearly indistinguishable skills as it relates to flying, so trying to compensate on merit would likely end up paying based on years of service in the end anyway.

 

[PRINCESS KIDAGAKASH]

No, just worked my ars off and moved into positions as they came open, 2 times via a promotion and once via a lateral move. That's the wonderful thing about "at-will" employment; you don't need to backstab anybody to get where you want to be.

Also, you expose your extreme ignorance of what someone in a financial analsys role actually does when you use the meaningless "pencil pusher" idiom. That's about as bad as a previous poster that thought an accountant just "counted" things.

So,you're one of the financial "wizards" that thought lowest bidder airport security was "cost effective"? You remind me of a cousin of mine who sells "credit card securities". What a scam that is!

 

[finman]

Well your point regarding a merit based system ending up being seniority based might be true. Assume that it is, do you not still get the benefit of the worker still not having the security of "seniority" to hide behind as so often happens?

Agreed, when it comes to laying people off, not having to do so by seniority would create a great benefit to productivity, as the least productive (highest paid) employees could be let go. Right now, the most productive pilots are generally those that must be furloughed first, as they have the lowest wages and generally have the least unproductive time (sick and vacation)

There would also be significant benefits if there were no seniority in that pilots would not be allowed to move around to different equipment types as often, which drives significant training and unavailibility expenses. At NWA, there are 16 different flying positions, and pilots bid and are awarded those positions based on seniority. As you can imagine, when the airline is shrinking or growing in one particular fleet type, this creates a ripple of training as pilots move into/out of those seats. (I.E., maybe the guy that holds the highest seniority gets awarded the CA744 seat that opened up, but there was another guy below him on seniority that had flown that seat in the past, and thus needs much fewer training days to be cleared to fly).

So,you're one of the financial "wizards" that thought lowest bidder airport security was "cost effective"? You remind me of a cousin of mine who sells "credit card securities". What a scam that is!

No, I don't work in that area. I don't think NWA is even involved in airport security as far as I know. I think the TSA is responsible for that, but I could be wrong. I don't work in sales, so I'm not sure what the cousin comparison means. You're losing me with this post.

 

[Kev3188]

Agreed, when it comes to laying people off, not having to do so by seniority would create a great benefit to productivity, as the least productive (highest paid) employees could be let go.

So I'm automatically less productive compared to another (less senior) supervisor because I'm topped out??? Please explain....

There would also be significant benefits if there were no seniority in that pilots would not be allowed to move around to different equipment types as often, which drives significant training and unavailibility expenses. At NWA, there are 16 different flying positions, and pilots bid and are awarded those positions based on seniority. As you can imagine, when the airline is shrinking or growing in one particular fleet type, this creates a ripple of training as pilots move into/out of those seats. (I.E., maybe the guy that holds the highest seniority gets awarded the CA744 seat that opened up, but there was another guy below him on seniority that had flown that seat in the past, and thus needs much fewer training days to be cleared to fly).

Drastic fleet changes aside, I wonder how adopting the payscale UPS has (pay is based on time with the company instead of type flown) would affect this?

No, I don't work in that area. I don't think NWA is even involved in airport security as far as I know. I think the TSA is responsible for that, but I could be wrong. I don't work in sales, so I'm not sure what the cousin comparison means. You're losing me with this post.

IIRC, pre 9/11 (and TSA), the airlines were responsible (read: paying for) for providing security at various airports. In my current station, NW is the largest carrier, and therefore was also responsible for maintaining the X-ray machines and other sec. equipment.

 

[Bagbelt]

People get so cute, with no union you can go as far as you want with your fellows cheering you on in a spirit of harmony. I have worked both, some jobs had no need for a union, but in 20 years I have yet to see a non-union outfit pay better than a union one. And I don't care how smart of gifted you are, without a contract you have your hat in your hand. Usually, the guys I work with who say the union sucks and they don't need anyone are the most lazy and incompetent who hide behind the contract after they've been caught. The bigger the operation, the more need for a union.

 

[finman]

So I'm automatically less productive compared to another (less senior) supervisor because I'm topped out??? Please explain....

Drastic fleet changes aside, I wonder how adopting the payscale UPS has (pay is based on time with the company instead of type flown) would affect this?

Overall productivity can be broken down into two components: Physical productivity (widgets produced per hour) and Rate productivity (dollars paid per hour). This overall productivity is effectively the dollars paid per widget produced.

If you are top scale and earn $20/hr, and you produce 110 widgets per hour and your co-worker makes $15/hr and produces 100 widgets per hour, who is more productive in total?

The guy that makes $15/hr is more productive, because his unfavorable physical productivity (10% fewer widgets per hour) is more than offset by the favorable rate productivity (25% less pay per hour).

In most airline unionized positions, it would be difficult to assign a higher physical productivity to a group of more senior employees. For example, a 12 year pilot is going to get the plane from A to B in the same amount of time and in the same condition as a 6 year pilot. In addition, the 6 year guy uses less vacation and likely calls in sick less, so he is actually more productive on both measures (physical and rate).

That's why a topped out employee is generally less productive than a lower paid employee that is in the same work group. Naturally, there are exceptions here, as a new hire or someone that just wasn't catching on would probably have such a miserable physical productivity that the pay rate differential doesn't make the junion person more productive. I guess the underlying assumption I'm using here is that after 3 to 4 years on the job, there probably isn't much of a physical productivity gain with years of service, and since the rates go up with years of service, the 3+ guys are probably much more productive in total than top step guys.

 

[local 12 proud]

the 6 year guy uses less vacation and likely calls in sick less, so he is actually more productive on both measures (physical and rate).

Wow..the true colors come out!

so tell us finman are you a member of "The Church Of Euthanasia"?

 

[AP Tech]

Well finman, this has to be one of you dumbest statement!!! Hell, why not just hire everybody just for 89 days and that way you will not have to pay ANY benifits. Lay them off on the 90th day and start the sequence all over again.

Speaking of that 6 year pilot, who would you rather have flying the aircraft when a major problem comes up? The six year guy or say someone like Capt Hayes, a few months shy or retirement? If you forgot he was the one who brought in the DC 10 dead stick into Sioux Falls a few years back. Sure he was maxed on vacation and salary, but what price do you put on a human life? Not saying the 6 year man could not have done it but I know whith who I would want to be flying.

When you number crunching bean counters make a mistake there are very seldom fatilities, most is a financial suffering, and if its really bad, the company comes out with the famous "restate the earning report"

 

[finman]

Wow..the true colors come out!

so tell us finman are you a member of "The Church Of Euthanasia"?

For everyone getting all upset by the productivity discussion, I will clarify that this is just a financial measure of the labor productivity to a company. Obviously there are other factors involved, including safety. No need to get your panties all in a bunch. I was just answering Piney's question as to how a company could benefit from not having a seniority system for their unions, and this happens to be the "theoretical" financial benefit that would exist.

I have no idea what your post means, Local.

 

[AP Tech]

You hit the nail on the head "financial measure" little common sense involved but they do save a few $$$.