Vol 53

Apr 2016

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Opinion.

We ran this “Opinion” piece quite a few years ago but the topic keeps popping up so we thought we’d give it another lease on life.  

Officers - who needs them???

A few of us were sitting around a camp fire recently, cooking a bit of meat, having a drink or two and telling a few yarns and as often happens, late into the evening, with a few aboard, we set about solving a lot of the world's problems. One topic that came up and which caused a bit of heated debate was the way the Air Force is (or in our case was) run.

Next day I got to thinking about our 'intelligent' discussion from the previous night, and I think we might have hit on something. None of us could understand why officers were needed in today's modern technological Air Force. All the inclusion of Officers in today's Air Force seems to do, as far as we could see, is divide the Air Force into two separate classes. It's a form of segregation. It just doesn't make sense. Why should a (for instance) Pilot Off EquipO have authority over a Flt Sgt Sumpie. If push came to shove, neither could do the other's job so why is one given so much authority over the other. Is it a big stick thing, do the powers that be think that the only way to get men and women to do their job is to 'order' them around. The civvy contractors that do the major servicings on the RAAF's aircraft don't work like that, yet they get the job done and do it well. Job satisfaction beats a big stick as an incentive every time.

Surely it's not a pay thing??  We all understand that different jobs demand and deserve different pay rates, but you don't need an officer class for that - firms like GMH, Caltex, BHP etc have thousands of workers, all on different pay rates, yet they don't have 'classes' of employees. And, funnily enough, all these thousands of people know what their job is and get on and do it without the presence of an officer - how is that possible??

Is it a case of "It's always been that way!!" - could be. Years ago all aspects of life were very class conscious, from the King down, we’ve just evolved that way. But not today - we've outgrown that. In today's RAAF, with all its sophisticated equipment, the job is the important thing - surely. When the crew of a C-17 leaves an airport for a 4,000 Klms flight over water, their only concern should be whether the ground crew serviced their aircraft properly, not that some impudent avionics tech had on dirty shorts or didn't salute correctly or didn't call me Sir!! 

But it happens.

Is it perhaps kudos?? Are officers needed because people like being and playing Officers?? If so, why not have everyone an officer. We personally know of a women, married to an officer, who used to introduce herself as Mrs Sqn Ldr XYZ.

Why should a group of people, all with the same purpose, be divided into two segregated classes? Each class will certainly contain some very talented people, yet because of the structure, one class cannot fully utilise the talents available in the other. We have fond memories of squadron detachments where one or more aircraft, with their relevant air and ground crews, would be away from base for two or more weeks. All personnel worked as a team, everyone helped everyone, rank was acknowledged but not enforced, people worked, lived, ate and socialised together and the job got done very smoothly and very efficiently with each man relying on and respecting the other's skill. For that reason, Detachments always ran a lot better than normal squadron activity back at base.

There is a lot of discussion out there on this very topic, one such opinion piece was written by Ricardo Semmler, successful business man and the author of “Maverick, the Success Story behind the world’s most unusual workplace”. You can read his thoughts HERE.

We'd love to know your thoughts on the matter - please drop us a note telling us what you think.

Apology.

This edition is late, for that we apologise, though there was nothing we could do about it. We’ve spent the better half of a month in hospital with the dreaded bowel cancer which we’ve been assured is now gone and we can get on with things. You can see more on that HERE.

Membership.

The response to our membership questionnaire was outstanding, we received hundreds of replies and suggestions and we’ve decide to go with the following.

·                1 year’s full membership for $12.00

·                Life (5 year’s) full membership for $50.00

Annual Membership will run from July one year to June the next, with this year’s annual membership expiring in June 2017. As we’ve said, full membership is not compulsory, you can still receive the RAM which will remain open, free and available on the net and we’ve decided to limit life membership to 5 years because as we’ve recently discovered, we’re all mortal and 5 years could very well be a lifetime.

So, if you’d like to contribute and help us with the ever increasing costs, please join as a full member.

If you are already a member (ie: if your name is on this LIST), please fill in the form below and send it to us, if you haven’t already joined (if you're not on the list), please use the form HERE.

Reunions.

If you're having a reunion and you would like us to cover it and publish it, let us know and we'll see what can be done.

5¼ in Floppy drive!

We’re looking for a 5 inch 1.2 meg floppy drive. If you’ve got one that you no longer need would you either give or sell it to us. If you can help, please contact us HERE.

Errors

Our aim is to have this site error free – but that’s probably impossible. But with your help I reckon we can get pretty close. If you see any errors, be they punctuation, spelling, links that don’t work, facts wrong etc, (no matter how small) please let us know so we can fix them.

You can download the full magazine in PDF format HERE.

It is a very large file, contains 222 pages and will take a while to download.

The margins have been set so you can print on both sides of the page.

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