Unions are double edges sword. On one side they help prevent management from bullying MX crews and from getting fired for raising the BS flag. Often times, management has no idea what the respective MX fields do and what is entailed in their MX crews day to day job.
Management only care about numbers and meeting deadlines that were set by engineers who have no idea how to work in their respective area in the field. Yes, MX from the factory and MX at the field level are two separate beasts and completion times will vary depending on parts availability, support shop availability and let's not forget the ever present "opening a can of worms" when you dig in to a system for repair.
As an example, I am working on a mod that requires the entire cockpit be gutted (to include sub flooring), there are a few shops that we have to interface with to accomplish this modification: Avon, Engines, AR, Fuels, corrosion and E&E. anyone of these shops can find something wrong with their systems that will push the completion date by a few hours to a few weeks.
Chasing numbers will always lead to mishaps.
The other side of the sword, Unions also protect the slugs because management almost always screw up disciplinary paperwork preventing from legally firing the slug.
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