A ban on people taking up check and training positions is an excellent idea. However, we require clear leadership and direction in this action.
Our President and Committee have remained completely silent on any issue of contract compliance, despite a growing rise of discontent from the AOA ranks for action.
Personally the breaking point for me with regard to training/checking etc was when two senior AOA Committee members went into training earlier in 2007. Having held off for "industrial reasons" for a while, I thought "f*ck it", if the Committee are
doing it then why should not I?
I am now in T&C for lack of guidance from my Union Leadership.
I believe that we should have been in contract compliance for a long while already.
The 744F operation survived last year thanks to a small number of people (guys who had the right to refuse) agreeing to fly the freighter. However, there was no direction from our Committee to not "fly the freighter", so I can hardly blame the guys I know who went ahead and kept the CXF operation afloat. This is a bitter pill for me to swallow, since I spent over 9 years on the -400 and continually refused to fly the Freighter. Ultimately this ended up with me having to do some b*ll****ting to my CP to permit my eventual categorisation "A" to get a command. My individual stand in this situation got me and the Association nowhere!
I have emailed the current AOA President (cc his Committees) on and off for years regarding my desire for action. However, they have preferred to go with a softly-softly/go-with-the-flow approach. Personally I believe this approach is completely wrong. However, I accept that I am only one of approx 1270 members so I can merely state my view to the Committee (via email and personal approach etc) and then vote accordingly. I will then stand with everyone for what we have agreed to do. That is the way the system works and I will live with it.
Five Green. I like your point about having the AOA trojan horse march into the "training camp". I assure you that there is not an official AOA "black-op" to do so. However, the realities of CX generation geo-politics means that the latest generation of Training Captains are very well attuned to the career frustrations of our S/O's, F/O's, plus themselves and can be expected to perform with the frustrations typical of their generation.
ACMS. You remind me of how I was in 1999 and 2001. Good for you, I share your frustrations etc. However, the way to have any effect upon this situation is too....
- Email your committee. I have been doing this for years, but please join me and try to get their attention. With the exception of maybe NC they generally don't read this forum. (BTW... NC, good work mate, like your input)
- Offer your help. CX has a staff of full time professionals with an almost unlimited budget. We have a small bunch of semi-educated pilot volunteers who have lives, wives, kids, rosters etc. Please find a Committee mentor and offer to help him, do some of his research or help write up some research for him etc. Failing that, take a flight off his roster so that he has the time to work for you (for no pay).
- Recruit more members. This is a hard one when we have a "silent" committee while faced with so many problems. Current membership is approximately 59% out of 2200 pilots. The 2008 recruitment target is 250+ pilots (150 F/O's, 100 S/O's of whom approx 35-40 are Cadets). So we can expect approximately 20 new joiners per month next year. (Assuming any of them actually tun up to start their new job!) However, this means that in order to increase our membership above 59% we have to outpace the level of recruitment, say 25-30 new members per month to make any headway against 20 new joiners. One factor in our favour at the moment is the very high resignation rate. In 2007 I believe we lost 86 pilots against 230 recruits.
- Be ready for action. While we encourage/wait-hope-pray etc for our Committee to get ready to start leading us, we should be ready for conflict. I hope that this year is the year where something happens. Personally, I have a contingency fund in place for my family. My household is also well trained with regard to answeing telephones etc. Also crew control etc are lulled into a false sense of security re answering crew direct/responding to reserve call-outs etc.
An Army without leadership is a rabble waiting to be massacred.
What we desperately need is a Leader and a Committee who will take us foward in some sort of action, however limited. Rather than just "slagging off" individual members who have perhaps gone into training etc, we should be calling for
Leadership into Industrial action