Truth Hurts

Ok, so I went to the thesaurus to get the antonym to collaboration and cooperation. I changed the first word when I read an e-mail from my good friend and former NATCA Vice-President Tom Cavanaugh. Today I was reminded that we have a very long road back to collaboration and cooperation, including at Albany. There are a lot of things the manager at Albany Tower does not comprehend. Within the past two, we have called him out publicly for: Informing his staff in person of an employee infected with MRSA, then posting the same information in the "non-mandatory" or "C" binder, which is rarely read.   Twice scheduling controllers for nine consecutive shifts without a day off.   Telling an employee that she had to secure a shift swap or he would deny her jury duty, then accusing the employee of "playing games" when she wasn't needed for jury service one day. It would be laughable if it weren't so sad. Today, I found out that Albany was getting two new con...

I make no secret about how I became a union activist. A very large man and staunch union supporter convinced me that belonging to NATCA would be the right thing to do and a smart career move on my part. I believe it would also keep my health care costs down, but I cannot be sure of that. It really didn't take that much convincing and the story is more colorful that way. I have heard stories of people who signed their membership forms on pool tables and pinball machines in smoke-filled bar rooms. I signed up in the NATCA office at Syracuse Tower. 18 months later, I was the President of my local – two weeks before I became a full performance level controller. I became active in NATCA at a time when collaboration and cooperation were the new buzzwords. NATCA and FAA had just signed an agreement on a new project called Quality Through Partnership, also called QTP or QTiP. The idea was that the union and management would solve problems by consensus building rather than traditional negot...

40 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King had returned to Memphis to conduct a second march in support of the sanitation workers of AFSCME Local 1733 who were on strike. We must never forget the roots of the labor movement are deeply entwined with the civil rights movement. It's as much about human rights as it is labor and civil rights. Dr. King delivered many moving speeches in his short lifetime. One of the most famous titled "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" ( Part I and Part II) was delivered the day before. If you have never heard it - or even if you have - it is worth a listen. I was fortunate to study the sanitation workers strike last year in a labor studies class and I am embarrassed to admit, listened to Reverend King's speeches for the first time. His words ring every bit as true 40 years later. In class, we watched the documentary, "I Am a...

I thought I would use the following excerpt from a recent e-mail to re-launch my writing career. (Yeah, right!) I went through a period recently where I didn't feel much like writing or doing much of anything. I took some time to reflect finish my school work and decided now is the right time to once again start sharing some of my thoughts. The following is plagiarized from my own work. It comes from an e-mail sent to a select few people in NATCA and I wanted to share it with you all. I edited it down, because I believe in the message and did not want it to get lost in the issue that the e-mail was sent in response to. I am a union member, a union advocate and a union activist. I do what I do and what I have done for seventeen years without fanfare or award and without the expectation of any. I do so because I believe in what I do and I believe I can make a difference. For my service to this union, you (and the membership at large) owe me nothing, except the opportunity to continue...