Impressive wingspan.
A few months ago, Net Jets Europe pilots had no union or association of pilots whatsoever. Now we do.
I don't really understand what your agenda is. You mention BALPA membership so I gather you are pro-union.
BALPA may well be better than SKYSHARE, but I can definately guarantee you that SKYSHARE is better than nothing. The company now is making an effort, or at least trying to appear like it, to listen to crew.
A while back, some effort was made to try and introduce BALPA or IPA to Net Jets. It was a failure.
I am shure that a very important part ( if not the most) of forming a union has been accomplished by SKYSHARE and the people in it's board whom have put themselves at risk and put in a lot of effort. This is to UNITE over 570 paid up crew and 670 total crew.
Not bad out of 940.....
It seems that OUTREACH "volunteer" candidates are a total of 8 crew..... Out of 940...... 8 volunteers for 6 seats.... No wonder some people supposedly received phone calls to "volunteer"....
Of these, it seems that 3 of them actually received phone calls from Upper Management in order to encourage them to "volunteer" themselves as candidates. Not very impressive stats or methods.
You may be right that eventually we will be better off with a big recognized union. But one thing is for sure, if everybody in SKYSHARE was as obstinate as you that the only way to do this is their way and via BALPA, then we would still be NOWHERE!!! At least now the company is trying to make it look like they actually care about our opinion.
We will see what happens, but im sure that we are much better off now than 6 months ago, and if in the end, if we can't handle it on our own and decide to become part of another union, we will already be a large group and it will be very different "knocking" on BALPA'S door as a group of 600 than again trying to rally up people to join directly and individually and getting absolutely nowhere.
I think that it is safe to say that most crew are tired of managers ( about 7 sets in 13 years ) doing what they feel like to benefit themselves and their short term objectives and ego's and then leaving. We care more about this company than they do. It is much more our company than theirs. We have worked for it longer and have made more sacrifices than them.
We have more to lose if things don't go well, and we are tired of new people that are always "smarter and more knowledgeable" than us, not listening to us or respecting our opinions.
Last edited by suchiman; 19th Aug 2010 at 13:47.