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Thursday, August 04, 2005

And the Beat Goes On

Sometimes corporate America just leaves me shaking my head. Take my day job, for example. In their quest to get pay cuts from our mechanics, the airline is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Easily.

First, there's training all our management employees with aircraft maintenance licenses so that they can be up to date in case of a strike. Then, all the mgmt employees that are being deployed outside of Minneapolis have wireless internet PDAs. Um, hey, I'd like one of those too, but can't justify the cost--especially the monthly fee for wireless internet service. The company has also hired and trained "replacement workers." Not only did they get bonuses for agreeing to hire on and cross the picket line, word is the powers that be are paying for their housing too while we count down to the strike. Keep in mind that our workers need background checks and such, so factor in the costs of doing all that as well. I'm sure there's more stuff that I haven't heard about too.

The latest news is that all office employees are being rebadged and fingerprinted. Yep, that's right, we'll be paid to stand in line forever to have another badge picture taken and a new badge created. We also have unmarked black cars driving around--hired security.

I suppose all this security stuff makes a certain kind of sense, but I keep thinking, wouldn't this money be better spent in other ways? Like maybe closing the gap between what the mechanics union has proposed for pay cuts versus what the airline has proposed?

Sigh. This will be my first real strike--I can't count the pilots' strike since they wanted us to come to work and cross their line. Although, TBH, I won't be there for the onset of the strike since I'm having surgery and will be out of work for a while. If the damn doctor will ever sign my family leave paperwork. He's "busy" according to the girl who answers the phone.

So I'm a little stressed right now. Things are not a lot of fun at work and I'm getting anxious about surgery. Okay, maybe I'm bordering on scared. I just wish I could time travel to a point where the foot was all healed and this was all over with.

MN Weather Report: 70 degrees. Rain.