A quote for AC Execs
 

I am sitting in the MLL having a coffee and perusing the G&M.

This quote from Isidore Sharp, CEO of Four Seasons Hotels, caught my eye for wisdom and relevance to AC's present situation

"My job was getting employees at every level to focus on one priority: pleasing customers. And it was also getting managers to focus on the obvious corollary: pleasing employees"

Here is a simple and effective strategic plan for revitalizing the airline.

I fear i'm going to offend.....but at the Four Seasons you have a vast range of associates who make from minimum wage + up and can appreciate good leadership and praise. While at AC, they start much higher then that and can be tainted by a lifer making 5, 6, 7 times that and virtually free flights and still feel they deserve more.

Both groups are in the service sector, but one group appreciates that and the other would like to forget that.

So, this might work on the newer folks, it won't work well on the seasoned, locked-in unioniized vet who has a sense of entitlement. More, more, more.

When I read today's extract from Sharp's book in the Globe, the comparison with AC could not be avoided (and I knew it would quickly be posted here). Another classic quote is "But the fastest way for management to destroy its credibility is to say employees come first and be seen putting them last". AC in a nutshell. Sharp said it was not easy to change the "commanders issuing orders" approach, but he did do it.

I have to read the book!

Does anyone have the link?

Remember Robert Milton's comment about how leadership means being "in charge"? He, and AC management in general, could learn a lot from this paragraph:

Well Milton is back running AC, so perhaps we should buy him the book. hes pulling the strings from London.

It seems to me that unionized work forces in the G8 countries are finally coming to realize the hard way that you can only suck a company dry for so long before something bites you. For any endeavor or enterprise in life you get out of it in proportion to what you put into it.

One of the delicious ironies emerging from this economic downturn, or crisis if you prefer, is that the unions and their members might finally realize that if you want the goose to keep laying eggs, you have to feed it once in a while.

Speaking of the goose that lays eggs, of course every penny of every hefty bonus that was paid to the senior executives who managed AC into its current liquidity crunch was highly deserved, wasn't it?

I think that overall AC's unions have been pretty realistic through the ups and downs of the industry. They have usually made concessions when necessary. Big ones were made in 2003. More will probably be made before the current crunch is over. If Mr Milton was incorrect when he claimed to have left AC in good shape to withstand the next downturn, that's hardly the fault of AC's unions or of its unionised employees.

If only you took the time to do some research before opening your mouth, you would of realised that the unions at AC didn't hesitate to make massive concessions to help out the company last time around, in 2003....

The ones I can think of right now....

Extra 1/2 hour unpaid a day (that alone is 6% decrease in salary)
Temporary pay reductions
Creation of a new pay scale for employees hired after 2004 (which is significantly lower)
Loss of 1 week paid vacation
Loss of evening/night premiums for phone agents
Reduction of sick/family days from 15 to 6 a year
Accepting a 6 yr long collective agreement to help out the company

Etc etc etc.

I probably am missing a few, feel free to add in.

So please, don't go around saying that Unions are milking the company away, Execs who are leaving with ten's of millions of dollars, in this tough economy, are the ones milking the company, certainly not the unions.

Cheers

QED. These are all things that are demonstrably unsustainable. If you're gliding along at FL350 and drop down to FL300, you're still flying pretty high.

I agree - after years of flying I had the worst check-in experience at the SE gate at Pearson - rude, condescending, arrogant, etc. - seasoned vet, yes; willing to please customers, no

The only solace would be that this agent may be a casualty of bankruptcy

Thanks for the link.. I have pre-reserve the book.. It will be good reading!

I'm not a fan of unions, but at times they have their place. As pax, we've experienced a long trend towards being treated more as self-loading cargo. It's probably fair to say that the environment at AC hasn't been terribly conducive to creating a harmonious working environment for the employees.

Izzy Sharp makes a few good points in his book (at least, the exceprts that have been published thus far). He notes that if the workers work for you, then you (as management) should work for the workers. I doubt very much that's been the consistent case at AC. No wonder then, that the unions feel embittered at times!

But in today's expert, Mr. Sharp observed how opportunities can come out of economic downturns. Co-incidentally on the next page of Report on Business (page B4), Calin Rovinescue notes that AC needs to take advantage of the strong relationship with AE and the most frequent flyers, and that AC doesn't necessarily need to shrink back to profitability and that other solutions may be possible.

I hope Mr. Rovinescue is right and that a creative solution to the bankruptcy situation is forthcoming. And I hope that he's able to create a better working atmosphere at AC as well, for happy workers will most likely result in happy pax.

Perhaps AC should accept West Jets salaries and working conditions and Managment the same. That might solve most of the problems.

Respectfully, I'm not sure that's a fair comment. Like I said, I'm not a fan of unions and for the most part, many of them are pretty stupid in their demands. GM workers don't pay anything for their pension plan for example - what's up with that? AZ unions went on strike to protest bankruptcy measures - well duh!

But for the points made, they all result in lower pay. Obviously, no one wants to be paid less. But let's take things in perspective. If a worker is paid a lot to do not very much, then by all means - take away the vacation and the sick days and for sure, create a new lower pay scale for new employees. But if workers are paid more or less what others in similar jobs make, then the reductions outlined will hurt.

I'm not sure what an AC employee makes and I'm not sure what their vacation allotment is. I'm not even sure what airline employees make generally. But on the surface, I think the reductions as outlined bear consideration in current and future decisions by AC Management.

And absolutely, the last thing that should happen would be to make cuts on the backs of the workers, then pay million-dollar bonuses to the execs. Izzy Sharp said it best - one of the worst things to do is say that employees are number one, then in action put them last. AC is on the brink of bankruptcy. Right now everyone needs to share the pain and do their bit to prevent that from happening. That includes the execs.

Air Canada will never change..There is way too much bad blood between employees and the employer. Most employees think AC owes them the world. A bunch of whiners. Where else are you going to find a job doing customer service for over 25 bucks an hour and be rude and miserable to boot and get away with it??

I have no problem with mechs and pilots making the huge coin, but when it comes to unskilled labor like ticket agents and stews makin huge coin , you have to wonder.

It really depends on your definition of whiner. Some would define a whiner as a person who had made 35 posts on an internet forum, all of which trashed employees of Air Canada. Sorry about all that anger of yours.

Welcome to the internet Spounce... It is a real free for all. If it makes you feel better, I have 1700 posts and wouldn't totally disagree with flymate5. The bad blood is very real and you can sense in it bestof2k9's post. The front line staff do not always put their best foot forward. 1/4 of the posts on this board could attest to that. So where will the balance come from? The days ahead will tell, but I'm betting on the Feds having to dictate the solution and toss in some money.

Unless every last one of those 1700 posts of yours trashes AC employees and unless you never have anything nice to say, I'm not sure what you believe you have in common with flymate5.

Bad blood being evident in the writing of one poster here doesn't mean that it runs right through an organization. I'd also point out that it's nowhere near widespread enough to cause the type of operational meltdown that we have seen over the past year or so at a number of other airlines such as Air France, Lufthansa, Alitalia (many times), United or Northwest. That some front line staff don't put their best foot forward is true, unfortunately, but that's the case in many other workplaces. And as 1/4 of the posts on this board could also attest, most AC employees do give it their best.

I think it's still a bit early to predict what the future holds. There are too many variables.

This is not the place for me to discuss employee/employer relationships, however I will say this :

My post was a response to a blatant generalisation of the nefariousness of unions, I wasn't trying to show bad blood between employees and employer, simply trying to show that sacrifices have been made by the unions at AC when times were hard, and they haven't always been out to milk the cow.

Secondly, I have nothing against executives being rewarded, for a job well done , however I find it hard to justify all the monies paid out to top management, in light of the events that happened over the past few years, and that partly brought Air Canada to the precarious financial situation it finds itself in today.

It is hard to demonstrate solidarity towards a company, when they don't demonstrate any towards the employees.

Take David Barger, CEO of JetBlue, in example. Last year, he accepted a 50% percent pay cut, over a 6 month period, in acknowledgement of the hard time the airline was going through. While this gesture is only symbolical, as his 250,000$ salary still places him in the top 3% best paid individuals in the USA, it shows that he knows, he cares, and he's willing to help out.

Cheers,

A self-centered flyertalker, who puts his left foot forward and thinks he is owed the world ;):rolleyes:

Bestof2k9

As I always say don't like the job get another one; why do folks stay? cause its still a good deal with comparable industry skills.

It's been a few years since I ran into a terrible AC employee in my travels.

Here's a little info I don't mind sharing, when I started in '95 as a cleaner I was making $9.79/hr, when I started back with ramp services after being laid off as a mechanic and not wanting to move to YUL I was offered a starting wage of $10.62, this summer they are paying part time staff $10.80 in YVR for ramp duties. Not huge money, but as people say no one's holding a gun to your head.


Ramp Roscoe
YVR

And why do people stay...I wonder..could it be the lax work environment and no accountability???

No, its because some people can like a job, enjoy working and helping out customers, even if the pay is bad, and not be miserable.

But I guess you can't understand that, now can you?

It's a bit of both,a small percentage actually enjoy what they're doing and have fun going into work, many are "trapped" by the pension plan and are so poisoned they can't work anywhere else or would be tolerated anywhere else, some come just for the flight benefits etc, but as for the starting wage I'd say they're not coming for that.


Ramp Roscoe
YVR

Nor do I have a problem shareing my info,

As a Jazz F/A I am paid 25.98 Per block hour, a block hour being door closed to door open, average block hours per month somewhere between 78 and 85. With the maximum being 90.

The maximum block hour rate for those of us hired post CCAA is 27.02 per block hour.

Why do I stay? I love my job, and think that im pretty good at it, everyone here is the judge of that however!

Those are interesting numbers - thanks for sharing.

If you do the math, it's easier to see why some individuals might have the attitude they do. But on the flip side, it also demonstrates that the people who do a good job are special folks that we pax should take a moment to appreciate.

To give you an idea for the call centre staff, the pay scale for new employees (this pay scale began in 2004) starting salary is 11.23$ an hour, with yearly raises to eventually get to ~ 20$ an hour, after 8 years.

After all deductions an employee with less then 1 year seniority makes around 600$ every two weeks.

So no, don't go there for the money....

Cheers

union bashing
 

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I am happier on an Air Canada long-haul filght with a 25-year vet FA than on a non-union carrier with no seriously experienced FAs. Slightly less thrilled to serve me coffee, much more capable of keeping me alive.

I am happier in a world Henry Ford would embrace, in which his every employee could afford a Model T.

Union-bashers are right: on non-union carriers, your peanuts will be handed to you with a higher level of sucking up. The FAs are happier. The gratitude is palpable. We feel more important.

I understand your concern. I, myself have the same concern. But it's not part of the Big Picture.

Henry Ford, unions? Ford supported Hitler throughout WWII. Even supplied him with truck parts.

Ford = Hitler? are we really having this discussion?
 

If anyone can explain how Stranger's "Hitler" comment discredits, rebuts, diminishes, challenges or even addresses my comment, it would be very helpful.

I hasten to add that I am not disputing the truth of Stranger's comment. It is perfectly, verifiably, entirely true. But it appears to me, at first blush, to be utterly irrelevant to the point I was making, which was that even industrialists sometimes believe that workers should earn a living wage. And that the industrialist's motive for this belief is not religion or socialism. In Ford's case, it was economic.

I am not touting Ford as a hero nor offering the simplistic idea that because he had one good idea all his ideas were good. Is Stranger suggesting Ford could never have been right about anything? Do I even have to make this point?

Eh, cool down. I don't disagree with your point. I just don't think mentioning Ford as an example really fits in the argument.

My point was that Ford was no lover of unions. I don't think you can really say that he would "embrace" a word in which unions are OK.

On the other hand, it seems clear he had a more enlightend view of labour relations, explicitly stating that he thought employees should earn enough to afford the products they were making.

I don't see anyone at Air Canada suggesting employees should make enough money to be able to purchase a Latitude fare.

But when you can fly for the administrative cost of the ticket, and the cost of a meal, it could be argued that you don't need to be paid at a level that would allow you to afford an expensive ticket.

The free flights have a value, much like a company car does too... One can choose to make a little less per hour for some of the other benefits. I know some AC families that probably use $20-30k in flights a year, others $0. In my mind every AC employee has a choice to work there. And I am not saying that changing jobs is an easy thing to do, specially if you are getting on in years, or have very specialized skills (regardless of the state of the economy), but the employees who are there, have to remember that they work for a company that supplies a service to the public, and AC has to do all they can to ensure they provide the training, support and incentives to ensure their employees remember this.