All,

I hope everyone is having a good week and a good Easter for those of you who partake in that. I hid Easter eggs for my kid all over the yard and he hasn’t found a single one yet. 😂😂 We have quite a few trainees upstairs now so if you have some free time on your breaks try to take some time to head up there are introduce yourself. I’m sure they would appreciate a break in the studying.

Staffing

There isn’t much to report right now but I want to hammer home a few points about the staffing issues we have faced over the last few weeks and I assume will continue to face into the summer.

When I bring issues of short staffing to mgmt I am always met with comments about how long our breaks are and that no one is going over two hours. So far that is true. But I believe that is largely because of the amount of pride we all have in the work we do. There are often situations where one of us agrees to work a busy sector without a D side because we know that if we say we need one, the one person that is on break is going to get paged back at 20 minutes after being on position for 1+45. So by having pride in our work, we are making the numbers look good for mgmt. I am saying all of this to encourage you to not put yourself in unsafe situations. If you need a sector split or you need a D side, tell mgmt. Regardless of what the staffing is. Safety is the first priority for us and it is important that we take it seriously even if it feels like they don’t. There is also a flip side to that. If you are the one that gets paged back from break just try to be gracious and understand the greater good. It doesn’t happen often and you could be on the receiving end of the help next time around. I would hate for us to get into a mindset that we shouldn’t be asking for help when we need it.

On that note, if you ask for a D side or a sector split or any kind of help and they are unable to provide it due to staffing, let me know immediately. These are also situations that you can file an ATSAP report on and I highly recommend doing that if you feel like safety was compromised.

I am also looking into the discrepancy in staffing between 4/13 and 4/20. Both are Saturday shifts. Mgmt denied leave on 4/20 that would have put us 2 under. I agree with that decision, we should not be going that low just for leave. However, the previous week (4/13), sick hits took us down to 3 under guides and no effort was made to remedy that shortage. So on 4/20 it was decided that 8 was the minimum number of people we could have, but on 4/13, when it would have cost the agency OT money to get to 8, it was decided that 6 was ok. The inconsistency there is a real problem for me and it is something I am addressing with mgmt. Those are exactly the type of situations that I need to know about so that I can address them. If you see something like that, please let me know.

One final note on all this staffing stuff. There are still plenty of days where staffing is really good. If on those days, sectors are split just to make sure we are using the people we have, I would encourage you not to balk too hard at that. I know that it sucks when you think you are about to have a day of great rotations and solid breaks then all of the sudden 14 and 15 are split and someone is working 10 with 1 airplane in it. Using the staffing we have when we have it is the only way to make an argument that we should keep what we have or increase it. If we show them that we only need 6 people to run a shift then they are gonna try to staff the D area with 20 people or something ridiculous like that.

I know there are a lot of angles to all of this and you may not agree with my thoughts on all of this. If that is the case I welcome any fresh viewpoints and ideas on how to handle these issues with mgmt.

In Solidarity,

Drew