Emergency Sick Call Procedures in Effect
“Blaming others is excusing yourself.”~ Robin Sharma
“Don’t; find fault, find a remedy.” ~ Henry Ford
“Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making
sense of chaos.” ~ Doug Coupland
“When you blame others, you give up your power to
change” ~ Robert Anthony
“We know who’s to blame and it sure
ain’t the rain” ~ Delta
Machinists (IAM) campaign
No one’s saying that flying this summer hasn’t
been challenging.
But contrary to what the Machinists (IAM)
campaign and their coattail whiners would have you believe, this appears to be
an industry-wide phenomenon and is not specific to any particular carrier. And
while the Machinists are trying to capitalize on the operational realities of
the airline industry this summer, by agitating your emotions and playing on
your anger and fear, the truth is that there is no empirical data that suggests
the Machinists have any power to override weather patterns or control sick
calls or prevent reroutes. So instead they complain about the company’s effort
to provide information and statistics while they work to provide a mutually
satisfactory solution.
Emergency Sick Call Procedures in Effect – You
Must See the Company Doctor.
What’s that you say? They can’t require that?!? A
union would never allow that to happen?!?
Well they can. And a union did. Here is a July
10, 2013 hotline message from TWU Local 556 to the Southwest flight attendants:
“Southwest Airlines Management has been communicating
with your Union Leaders this afternoon regarding a recent climb in sick calls.
Inflight Crew Scheduling is having a difficult time covering open
pairings.
At this time, an emergency sick call declaration
has been made by Management due to the number of call-ins being made to
Scheduling. With the current shortage of Flight Attendants, many of our
coworkers are being rescheduled and flights are being delayed. An emergency was
declared today in accordance to the 2002 Settlement Letter between TWU Local
556 and Management to satisfy an arbitration decision.
It is very important that you immediately comply
if you are required to see a Company doctor or if you are rescheduled. If you
feel that Management’s request in either situation was improper, please contact
the Union office at 800-969-7932 and let us deal with it.
Please refer to the Q&A on the Union’s Web
site for more information about procedures in this situation, which must be
followed to the letter by both the Company and our Members.
Also, please immediately contact the Union office
if you become aware of any Supervisors or Crew Schedulers who decides to “go
rogue,” and remember that Supervisors flying as Flight Attendants is a last
resort that our Union only agrees to in order to limit lineholder reschedules.
As always, of course, your Union’s first concern
is for the health and safety of both our Members and our passengers. Regardless
of the situation, do not come to work if you are genuinely sick. You will be
required to verify your illness with a Company doctor; therefore, if you are
not really sick, please report for duty as scheduled, and if you are able,
please pick up a trip.”
Legally Binding, Black and White Language
To hear the Machinist (IAM) campaigners tell it,
TWU is the mythical, magical “union among unions”. TWU is so wonderful, that
IAM activist David Bachman recently posted a TWU – Southwest flight attendant
rotation as a reason to vote for the Machinists union (even though NONE of the
IAM – Continental flight attendant rotations look anything LIKE a Southwest
rotation and EVEN THOUGH the machinists contract at IAM contains NONE of the
credits, work rules or minimum rest of either Southwest or Delta).
The reality is that weather, sick calls and
reroutes will happen with or without a union. And any contract will contain
language that allows the company to reroute crewmembers and manage sick calls.
So there are really only three differences between the summer operation at
Southwest and the summer operation at Delta:
1. The
contract language must “be followed to the letter” by the Southwest flight
attendants.
2. At
Southwest the company (or is it “firm”?) gets to decide which doctor you must
see.
3. Your
union is telling you that you must “immediately comply if you are required
to see a Company doctor or if you are rescheduled.” There are no options
for PPT, SPT, MTO and no negotiating with crew scheduling if there are other
personal issues involved that your reroute impacts. You must follow the
contract to the letter. And you must comply immediately.
Recombobulation Zone
“Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making
sense of chaos.” ~ Doug Coupland
Here’s a discombobulated comment from a flight
attendant in a public forum regarding flight attendant sick calls.
“I see the sick o meter is
back on the pothole with results from a weekend with mandatory sick notes. This
confirms that we are actually sick does it not? I think these long duty days,
short layovers, lack of real rest and proper food are now showing their true colors.”
The logic is disjointed because in the first
place it makes no causal connection between the increase in sick calls and the
duty day, rest, food issue. Duty days, rest and food are the same as they were
last summer, yet sick calls have increased more than 30% on some days, versus
the same time last summer. In the second place, this illogical comment doesn’t
take into account the fact that this phenomenon is not happening just at Delta,
but throughout the industry. Third and finally, the “solution” that this poster
is advocating (he was a former ADFA-AFA/TWU advocate who had bashed the
machinists campaign at Delta and is now a machinists supporter (has the wind
changed direction again?) ) is the union that brought the Continental
flight attendants duty days that could be 14 hours scheduled/16 hours actual,
NO crew meals on any domestic flights and layover rest that could be as low as
7:45.
So, the analysis is flawed, the “solution”
doesn’t provide relief and we are still left with the question of whether we
want to collectively pay millions of dollars per year to an organization, just
so they can tell us to “immediately comply if you are required to see a
Company doctor or if you are rescheduled.”
Sincerely,
Jose Arturo Ibarra
