Guest Commentary - Save The Green Pigs

 In one of CNET’s reviews of the popular video game Angry Birds, CNET summarizes the game succinctly: “The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 288 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.” 

The current Lupees leadership, their steipended “volunteers” and conjunctivitis-striken (can’t see themselves going to work) Lupeeites have branded the pilots as “Angry Birds.” CNET left out some details about the Birds. My girlfriends and I LOVE Angry Birds. The funniest thing about the game is that the birds are suicidal. If you have not played the game, you need to know that each level depends on launching the minimum number of suicidal birds that either explode on impact, drop an explosive egg, ricochet around, and eventually die in some humorous manner.

Please take a look at the new NJASAP Logo:

[Yes, this has been featured in internal communications by elected officials as their "brand." T-shirts, hats, stickers, and probably picket signs are either made or in the works. Also yes, you - can't - make - this - stuff - up.]

So. What’s the point? Are the pilots angry, suicidal, or what? What about the Pigs? The cuddly green pigs sometimes wear helmets, taunt the birds, and always oink. Is the analogy that the pigs are the EMT and stole their eggs? I thought it was the goose that laid the golden eggs? Is this more traditional unionism where we fear that management is stealing eggs from the workers that produced the eggs? Does the logo reflect the strategy to destroy the pigs’ (management) shelter and blow them up?

I LOVE it! It fits perfectly. Instead of meeting management at the table and talking about how to make more eggs, we’re going to ask pilots to blow themselves up in a suicidal attempt to take more eggs for themselves. They are even going to organize more groups into suicidal birds just like themselves. How’s that going, Dispatch?

The logo sums up our current leadership perfectly: Unable to communicate with words or actions they must resort to iconic cartoons to express themselves, and the analogies fit perfectly. Congratulations. QSG, please rename your site “Save The Green Pigs” because we need to communicate to our leaders on their maturity level, and we may not love our Green Pigs, but they are the only leaders with a plan to make more golden eggs for all of us.

“Oink!”

Taking the profession to the cartoon-level and ASSuming we will sacrifice our careers for yours. Great job a**-wipes.

#Honk #Oink

- QSG

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

QSG Respects The Process. The Golden Goose thanks any one who wants me to be healthy and prosperous and capable of laying golden eggs for many years to come for all to enjoy. It would seem as though some of my 2012 Predictions may be called into question. For now, we can celebrate the possibilities thanks to the Bee Gees.

To health and prosperity, I honk.

#Honk!

-QSG

Democracy rules.

The January 13 Eno-Eno-Rouf, In Pictures

Follow me and a new world to you will appear.

In a blaze of glorious anger and a spaceship of lies we will fly to victory.

All I ask is that you sacrifice your career.

#Honk!

- QSG

Guest Commentary - Cost of Hubris

Bravo. Now that's satire. Though I think the company will shut down EJM long before giving up the only shield we have to low-cost charter. Looks like we will just live with the agreement and endure the PR harm from administrative furlough-recalls. What? Lupee did not tell you about that?

Click here if the video did not play.

#Honk!

- QSG

It Does Not Take a Swami to Predict Lupee's 2012 Goose Eggs

"It's all coming to me now... more of the same for 2012..."

Honk! Honk! I am back from the islands and ready with a fully-researched batch of posts. I also have a bag of viewer mail and video, including notes from labor, management, and the people caught in the middle. January is going to be great fun for all lovers of satire and those willing to laugh at how low and slow some are willing to fly to try and manipulate others! Before we get to the (belated) predictions for 2012, I must recognize one pilot that wrote in during December just before I left. A 12-year captain in the X who wrote in to describe how he sat down over his Christmas break and printed and read every single Lupee Eno-Eno-Rouf since July of 2008 and he reported back that anyone willing to do same would see why management will not touch Lupee, line pilots are confused/infected with Lupees, and as a public figure Lupee is the best source of satire that we have next to the 2012 Presidential campaign. Thank you. Now, on to...

12 Crystal-Clear Predictions for 2012

12. BAD INFO MOJO

Lupee will continue to coordinate with terminated / resigned "on principle" partner Bend Over, and claim that they have deep business knowledge of how the company works in spite of not once coming to the table to accept inside data and work on any interest-based solutions (also known as pathetically cobbling together publicly available information and guessing).

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11. GOOD MONEY FOR FOOT BULLETS

Lupee will continue to spend dues money, payer fees, and management pilot fees on organizing 1) NJE pilots that will turn around and bargain international flying away from NJASAP pilots, 2) Flight Center employees who, if organized, will have to wait years to see any contractual benefits and be excluded from any profit sharing, 3) EJM pilots/employees, resulting in the destruction of EJM and a flood of aircraft into the low-cost charter market, shrinking the moat and harming the longevity of the fractional provider.

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10. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY WILL BE SELF-FULFILLED

Will the parent company ask the company to order less airplanes because the sector is depressed, charter has never been cheaper, and sales are soft OR will the parent company ask the company to restructure orders, order less airplanes because the union radicals are making war and owners flee to cheap charter? Fellow flyers - does the reason why matter? The Goose needs help, ideas, interest-based proposals. We have enough problems already without making more. To stop the self-fulfilling prophecies we will need leaders that think for themselves, or have balls. Either will do. Neither is likely.

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9. LUPEE'S HATRED WILL BANKRUPT THE UNION

How do I know? I asked A THIRD PARTY what it costs to arbitrate each 401(k) grievance. Even when bundled together, the 1000 or so grievances will cost each party $5-6 Million. Will Hansell want to pay that much to break the union's bank account? I hope he is not reading the Eno-Eno-Roufs, because only an industry vet would be able to resist the bait. Did you know that even with the different types of harm (portfolio increases of 1-4%), they all qualify for the single class-action? I sure hope the company agrees to roll them into one... of course Lupee is counting on your willingness to pay for picket signs, banner tows, newspaper ads, and of course, regular union operations like stipends for stewards by assessing the members for more dues once he's emptied out the bank account. Looks like one symptom of Lupees is letting anger keep one from thinking things through. Just look at patient zero.

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8. FINGER-POINTING WILL SIGNAL THE BEGINNING OF THE WIND-DOWN

Bend Over and Lupees will blame mis-management for the wind-down. Management will blame union rhetoric for the wind down. It won't matter, the 500-800 pilots that get to fly the permanently smaller company will have theirs (well, the 250-400 Captains will, anyway). Truth is, the parent company will decide if the shrinking will continue - based on their confidence in the employees to execute the growth plan - the very plan the union is avoiding seeing at all costs, since then they would be accountable for actually participating. The current path is much easier for the future consulting careers of union leadership.

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7. LUPEES WILL ENDORSE THE "SELL THE COMPANY" FANTASY

Yes, sell the company. Free market forces will suddenly realize that a product that in some markets is 4x more expensive than charter, with runaway labor costs and no alternatives in sight, with huge debt and a razor-thin margin, is a GREAT buy. Perhaps the old chairman will buy the place back - certainly that's why he sold Celene's old crib at a discount, so he can bet that on one of his horses, win big, and buy it all back....

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6. ABUSE OF VOLUNTEERS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

Lupee will continue to sit on / interfere with as many joint company-union activities as possible in order to suppress the communication of strategic, monthly, and daily progress on the committee level. Volunteers that dare to collaborate with their company partners will be forever branded as "company leg-humpers" and either fired, discredited, or humiliated into leaving their positions so that an appropriately stipend-ed Lupeeite can sit there and make war out of every opportunity.

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5. MORE CLASSIC HITS: LIE, LIE, LIE, AND MAKE COUNTER-ACCUSATIONS

Lack of engagement is the strategy that allows Lupees to spin the web of lies. Trying to run a business is what allows the company to continue to make mistakes that give credit to the lies. 401k communication? Riiiight. Pilots being brought in for dicipline? Riiiight. Reliable sources claim individual pilot data is being culled from intellijet and it will soon be clear that the 40 bullies that dominate the river of lies on the message boards are the top fatiguers, sick-callers, and policy abusers that cause the rest of us to sit standby more and get home later. When on earth is someone going to grow some balls and fire those people? See, there is room for improvement on both sides. Company can be more transparent, union can stop allowing the worst of the worst to set the strategy from the internet.

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4. ALL UNION CREDIBILITY WILL BE DESTROYED

Once it could be said that every pilot was "the union." Increasingly it is obvious that "the union" is in the mind of a handful of self-interested die-hards, and die their credibility will, along with that of every other pilot. It is bad enough that unprofessional behavior and bullying led to "informational picketing" that will forever harm the brand in the eyes of the owners and prospective owners, but because the company will not bend-over and accept childish antics the picketing, taunting via billboards, will escalate to newspaper adds, banner tows, and leafleting. Leverage is not being created. The ability of the company to sit down and expect to accomplish anything is evaporating. The word of union leaders will mean nothing, making any deals impossible and the slow death of the company inevitable. If self-fulfilling prophecies can be molded into interest-based proposals, or even honest meetings, then there may be hope.

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3. THE COMPANY WILL NEVER AGAIN HAVE A SMALL-GROUP MEETING WITH THE UNION

Simple explanation: No one can trust the dude farther than you can throw him, and one or two sycophants do not make reliable witnesses. Just go to njcrew and catch up on the correspondence and you will see that Lupees has a purpose in life... occupying hundreds of hours of company resources setting the record straight.

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2. THE "YOU CAN'T CHANGE HORSES MID-STRIDE" BATTLE CRY WILL BE IN VOGUE

There is an election looming and the ultimate union FUD campaign is around the corner. It will go like this, "Look, the company is buying X (airplanes, companies, FBOs, Chinese battery plants) and you need me to negotiate your next agreement." It is true, we need an experienced, mature negotiator working for us. But who is that? Can we pay for that experience? What if bargaining becomes prolonged? Then what? Who can provide consistency? I don't know. I DO know that Lupee could not close a revolving door, much less a deal. Just ask around. There's a six-year old quote from some of the negotiating committee members about his ability to close.

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1. WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, THE PERSONAL ATTACKS WILL CONTINUE

Because, as you will hear:

"It's not our/my fault. It's all their fault."
- It takes two to tango and Lupees forces them onto the high road so far, they will have to execute the business plan without union input.

"We can't work with lawyers like Kheller and Rosenthal."
- That's right, you can't.

"We have more experience running companies than they do."
- Running them into the ground.

"They are not wissening to me!"
-  Go to Cornell and learn Interest-Based Bargaining, stop spending your constituent money harming their interests, halt the baseless rhetoric, then maybe they will have something to listen to.

"They have brought in union-busters!"
- At this point, who can blame them. I hope they aren't wasting the money on them, because just as a company that needs a union gets a union, a union can only really bust itself and Lupee is doing a bang-up job!

"Let's go down the list and discredit each and every manager..."
- I have never heard of a manager discrediting a union rep. Have you? Hmmm.

"We know who the Goose is, and he's the Weasel!"
- That's right, because Lupee is counting on the fact that no one else can put it together. With a network that spans all sides I, QS Goose, can report that there are no sides, just fools with opinions. Based on the bullying on the boards, is it any wonder why I allow the discussion of my identity to continue? I'll give you a hint... the last time Lupee spoke to the pilots at the hotel I was right there within 20 feet. Good luck with that! Honk!

- QSG