From: here@home.net 
  
 On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 01:08:04 GMT, Andrew Chaplin 
  wrote: 
  
  
 > 
 >The sentiments voiced by Brendan and "Avn" concern me. I always served 
 >in regiments that were undermanned, but that undercutting of those 
 >regiments' manning was done on the side of what we needed for combat, 
 >and we thought we had a reserve component of tens of hundreds of whom 
 >we were confident and who we thought would back us up. The government 
 >could not commit us to combat on particularly short notice, so we felt 
 >we ready for anything to which we thought their small minds might 
 >commit us. I can tell from Brendan's and Avn's posts they feel they 
 >are stripped to the bone and do not have the confidence we had 15 
 >years ago. I think the CF ought to at least strive for that level of 
 >confidence and, by extension, morale. 
  
 Hi Andrew. 
 I agree that the level of confidence and morale are down and we have 
 often had talks about what to do about it. Many I know would have 
 liked a bonus on accepting the contract after 20 years. They have 
 quite a bit to offer the service and decided to stay in rather than 
 take their knowledge and experience elsewhere. 
 Pay raises mean very little, and working conditions are hard when out 
 of a crew of 15 (was 35 ten years ago) there are a handfull of 
 qualified techs and the rest are learning. 
 The ball was dropped several years ago and there have been some 
 unsuccessful plans to get things going again. The worst in my opinion 
 was trade amalgamation. Five trades in the airforce was turned into 
 one. The is on the AVN side. Instead of taking 5-8 years in training a 
 tech to be competent in one trade, now there are five trades they have 
 to learn. Would you feel good as a pilot climbing into a jet now? 
 It was then decided to pump up recruiting. guess what, the training 
 side of things can't handle the influx and Borden is way backed up. 
  
 Any answers, none here I'm afraid. It's gone past the point where 
 anything I can think of would work. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)