AA toxic culture

[livin'thesim]

Under my proposal, a new hire gets the same pay no matter previous experience.

As a pulled-from-thin-air example:

Mid-tier carrier (not legacy)
First year FO $50
Second Year $90
Twelfth Year $95

PLEASE, PLEASE do not get caught up in the details about the exact numbers but understand the principle:

The principle is that a DOLLAR TODAY is worth TWO dollars at some point in the future.

The pay rates should be blended so that over 20 years the income potential would be the same as if you used the current scale.

The overall effect would be the same after-tax and time-value-of-money income, even though the TOTAL amount would appear to be less.

Think of it this way: every pilot who leaves the seniority list before topping out has subsidized the income of the topped-out pilots.

Medical out at 40? Tough luck, you worked for less for the first half of your tenure, and never got to enjoy the fruit of your investment.

PAY ME NOW! It should not take 12 years to demonstrate my value to the airline. If I am still flying like a rookie after 2 years, fire my ass!!!

If I am not, then why are 12 year FOs getting 50% more money AND the best schedules?

Do hardware stores charge more for lumber bought at 8am than at 8pm? No. It is the same lumber.

Unions are not the problem. Seniority is not the problem.

EXCESSIVELY STEEP LONGEVITY-BASED PAY is the problem.

Making ALL carriers pay a time-blended rate prevents new start-ups from having an unfair advantage over mature labor pools.


It prevents airlines with a topped-out workforce (USAIR) from being disadvantaged.

It amazes me how many people want the steeply scaled longevity pay so that they have something to "look forward to".

Really? Okay, use my system and give me the excess each month. I will invest it for you, take 1%, and give you back more than you dreamed of at the end of your career.

STEEPLY SCALED longevity-based pay is what allows whipsawing.

It allows management scare tactics.

It prevents good pilots from leaving bad airlines.

I'll go back on reserve at another airline as long as I can pay the bills. Schedule is important, but you can't eat a good schedule.

The steeply scaled longevity based pay is the REAL source of management power over pilots.

 

[livin'thesim]

Just some further spitballing:

Let's take Alaska Airline's pay scale (because it was the first one that popped up on my search).

2nd year CA is $151. 12 year is $177.

Pay all CA the average of $164.

2nd year FO is $74. 12 year is $119. Pay all 2nd through 12 yr FOs the average of $96.

(1st year still get probationary pay, or prob. pay until completion of OE, or whatever).

Now, a straight average of rates is NOT COMPLETELY ACCURATE, since in this instance getting paid an average rate would make you RICHER than getting the adjustable scale, due to time value of money).

But adjust it so the net cost the the airline is the same over time. But all pilots win, and the senior are no longer handcuffed to a bad situation, and the ultra-junior can afford to live like a normal professional in other fields.


My system requires no master seniority list.

A pilot that changes airlines keeps a living wage but does not push anyone else down.

You eliminate much of the divisiveness between groups within a particular pilot pool.


Those with less longevity should not be ARTIFICIALLY subsidizing the paychecks of the senior. Low-longevity pilots get screwed, and high-longevity pilots get trapped, since they have to hang to a bad deal in order to ensure that the years of crappy pay finally bear some fruit.

 

[HA25]

The real problem is seniority based pay.

I think that most 20-year pilots might be willing to bail from a bad airline if they could start over as an FO at top-of-scale.

The huge pay differentiation between a 12-year FO and a 2nd year FO is the real problem. Pay should be averaged and only small raises given over time.

A 12-year FO contributes no tangible value over a 3-year FO. The pay gap is illogical; the only reason it exists is to favor the senior at the expense of the junior.

I'll bet you could get a 10-year pilot to switch airlines if they only experienced a 10% pay cut.

Besides, the idiotic system we have in place means that all your earning power occurs later in life, and that owning a nicer house or saving for retirement is postponed until much later in life than most professionals in other industries.

Instead of mandating a common scale, ALPA should mandate a maximum pay difference between bottom and top.

That gives each airline the ability to pay what it can afford, each pilot group can negotiate for higher pay, and it ensures portability of earning power because EVERYONE will be making the equivalent of a mid-scale.


CAUTION:

Many pilots are financially illiterate and will think that such a system would be "screwing" them out of high pay later in life. These people are unfamiliar with a concept called "the time value of money".

The more that pay is front-loaded, the more of your total career pay is in your own hands and control earlier for investing, paying off student loans, whatever.

And if your company goes bankrupt, you are better off since you earned more of your career long-term earnings before the bankruptcy.

The huge scale difference between bottom and top is stupid and irrational.

that makes so much sense that it will never happen..... I hate that.

 

[user912]

Which side are you on boys?

Dunno, they looks the same....

 

[waveflyer]

Livinthesim has it- this needs to get traction and worked on as a platform at every union-

 

[sbav8r]

If you take the time to read the full proposed legislation, you will see that someone is already trying to make this pay scale happen. It's worth your time to read the text.


4-7 of 8

operationorange.org
2. Minimum hourly rates of pay for payable hours in section 4.F shall be:

a. $300.00 per hour for widebody aircraft PIC/Captain,
b. $225.00 per hour for narrowbody aircraft PIC/Captain,
c. $200.00 per hour for widebody aircraft SIC/First Officer,
Fair Treatment of Experienced Pilots Act - Part 2
d. $150.00 per hour for narrowbody aircraft SIC/First Officer.

 

[flythere]

This profession is like lots of other jobs; labor, factory, retail to name a few! If a clerk leaves their job at walmart for target does that person
get to negotiate a salery at Target? I would think not! When the line worker at the GM plant gets tired of working there and wants to go over
to Toyota, does he get to keep his senority because he worked the line at GM?

What about WaMu, remember when they went out of business
a couple of years ago? So should all of those tellers and bankers go over to B of A and demand they be hired with their senority from WaMu?
Stepping ahead of all those B of A employees, some whom have been there over 30 yrs??

We are special, but not that special, we are not top flight doctors or attorneys or corporate managers with unique skills, we are pilots working for airlines. We as individuals cannot walk into another airline and negotiate a higher salery or want to keep our relative senority because I worked at XYZ airline for 20 years.

We chose the companies we work for and for some of us, we were the target of mergers or acquisitons. For those folks I feel bad when thing's
go south, but for the rest of us we chose our companies, maybe we chose wisely maybe not! When you were first hired at United or American or Frontier maybe thing's were going good, profits were up or maybe thing's were looking up. At any rate, now that times are bad and your
companies are faltering you want to rewrite the script!

If you went back and asked any United or American pilot if they had a choice between their current airline or Southwest or Alaska when they were originally hired, which would they choose??

I've heard the stories of guys/gals getting hired at Southwest or Alaska pre 9/11, then getting the call from UA, American etc, jump ship during training to get that better job! Ask those same guys/gals now where would they rather be today?

So you want to have the govt or the union dictate to a private or publicly held company how much they should pay their employees and when they should get raises?? Remember a guy named Stalin, what about Mao, Moe whatever his name?? Communism/marxism is not the answer, it has failed around the world, I don't care what your liberal professor has told you!

Is there corruption in corporate america? Sure, is there corruption in the government? you bet! Look at the story that broke last week about members of congress purchasing stocks with inside information about the companies and how they and their collegues would vote on legislation affecting those companies! Free market would be allowing businesses to close if they can't survive in the market-place!

Would a pilot at Southwest, Alaska, FedEx, UPS or Delta want to change the system? So you want to walk into UPS, take a sim ride and jump
ahead of 3,000 pilots? Am I afraid of competition? No, ask those that went to work for SkyBus a few years ago, remember them?

Is our system perfect? No, can we improve it, sure. But to blow the whole system up because a few are unhappy is ridiculous. Like I said there is nobody holding a gun to your head, pull the trigger and change professions, become an engineer, then you can set your own price, become a doctor, then you can negotiate a salery and other perks!

Good Luck in your future endeavors!

 

[livin'thesim]

Rescaling the longevity-based system front-loads a pilot's income.

A company that becomes much more profitable can hire away experienced talent by offering those experienced pilots a living wage.

The best part about this method is that it rewards pilots evenly according to the productivity of a unit of pilot labor.

An FO on a 737 earning 119/hr is not more productive than an FO on the same aircraft earning 74/hr.

True, a probationary pilot may be less productive than a fully qualified pilot, and therefore a probationary scale for the first year or two is something that most pilots could endure. (You do have some savings, right?)

Rescaling the longevity pay gives the high-time guys portability. It gives the new guys a living wage.

A good airline could steal talented pilots away from a bad airline.

Nowhere is it written in stone that unionization, seniority, and longevity pay must ALWAYS be deployed in the ways we used them in the past.


The BIGGEST benefit is that it works against management gutting of contracts by scaring those with lots of longevity. It allows pilot groups to call management's bluff.

"Screw with me, I will quit. I will take 20% cut to switch carriers." No longer do you have to drop from over $100k to $35k.

This method also means that when an airline folds, you can hire the qualified pilots at a wage that does not insult their professional status, instead of hiring low-timers who are willing to work for peanuts.

This allows talented pilots who have paid their dues to remain in their chosen profession.

 

[livin'thesim]

The problem with mandated minimum pay rates is that it is will probably allow good carriers to push wages down to the minimum with no probability of upward gains.

It also creates a one-size-fits-all approach to private industry. Wage and price controls usually end up having the opposite of the intended effect. No one ever seems to learn this lesson.

Ending steeply scaled longevity pay variance is something that each pilot group can enforce individually. It DOES NOT require industry consensus. It does not required all airlines to adopt it for it to BEGIN working.

It is not that radical of an idea, really. The position of pilot has become a labor commodity, with no notable specialization within the profession.

A single company paying widely varying rates of pay to two equally productive employees is illogical.

For all those who think that pay-for-productivity means that a 757 CA should make more than a DC9 CA, well then why should two equally productive DC9 CAs make widely differing wages?

 

[livin'thesim]

By the way, my method also is more "free-market" - it is the labor group freely deciding to change how pay is apportioned over one's career.

The minimum-wage-scale folks, while well-intentioned, are pushing for a more socialist, government-control method.

My method requires no agreement from legislators at all. It only requires one pilot group to see the benefits of the method and to act on it.