Narrative:

Our airplane was late arriving. The flight attendants were flying both legs (turning). Shortly prior to passenger boarding I was informed by the flight attendants that they had a staffing issue due to a dispute with the crew desk. Before long I heard from practically every flight attendant that they had been tricked and lied to by their crew desk; and that a couple of them would be refusing to fly back. None of this was my business or concern; but when it escalated to the point that a couple of flight attendants were crying and visibly shaken; I decided to find out if we had a crew safe for the flight. I called my chief pilot to keep him appraised of the situation. I seriously contemplated removing two flight attendants as they had been threatened with employment termination and had severe emotional reactions to this harshly worded order to fly from their crew desk. I had those same two flight attendants in the cockpit for approximately 10 minutes before they had convinced me they were safe for flight; the issue was resolved; and we were on our way. This safety report is clearly not about my opinion or interference in whatever contractual issues other employees encounter. But when I see seven normal people suddenly crying; physically shaking; and not in a position to immediately make rational decisions; then I must suspect a common outside problem. If that factor is not removed or resolved; the flight cannot proceed. Whatever transpired between the flight attendant crew desk and my cabin crew clearly had the ability to affect the safety of our flight. Worse; is that supposedly this whole issue had been resolved prior to departure from the previous flight. It was not; and I felt interference with the safety of my flight. The kind of discussions and threats made were done at a highly inappropriate time; and showed a serious lack of professionalism and safety concern on the part of the crew desk.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A B767-200 Captain reported that his flight attendant crew was extremely upset by crew scheduling and he considered removing them from the flight.

Narrative: Our airplane was late arriving. The flight attendants were flying both legs (turning). Shortly prior to passenger boarding I was informed by the flight attendants that they had a staffing issue due to a dispute with the crew desk. Before long I heard from practically every Flight Attendant that they had been tricked and lied to by their crew desk; and that a couple of them would be refusing to fly back. None of this was my business or concern; but when it escalated to the point that a couple of flight attendants were crying and visibly shaken; I decided to find out if we had a crew safe for the flight. I called my Chief Pilot to keep him appraised of the situation. I seriously contemplated removing two flight attendants as they had been threatened with employment termination and had severe emotional reactions to this harshly worded order to fly from their crew desk. I had those same two flight attendants in the cockpit for approximately 10 minutes before they had convinced me they were safe for flight; the issue was resolved; and we were on our way. This safety report is clearly not about my opinion or interference in whatever contractual issues other employees encounter. But when I see seven normal people suddenly crying; physically shaking; and not in a position to immediately make rational decisions; then I must suspect a common outside problem. If that factor is not removed or resolved; the flight cannot proceed. Whatever transpired between the Flight Attendant crew desk and my cabin crew clearly had the ability to affect the safety of our flight. Worse; is that supposedly this whole issue had been resolved prior to departure from the previous flight. It was not; and I felt interference with the safety of my flight. The kind of discussions and threats made were done at a highly inappropriate time; and showed a serious lack of professionalism and safety concern on the part of the crew desk.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.