Alaska 737 Type Rating

[ferlo]

Amen to that Dogg!!!



Ferlo- a proud bad apple.

 

[SirFlyALot]

Double amen to that Dogg!!!

At my company, one of the senior executives came in and briefed us describing the precarious state of the airline industry. He explained that of all the employees in the company, the pilots were the biggest stakeholders because we had the most to lose if the company could not keep costs under control. The reason? Pilot's skills are not portable. Why are they not portable? Because, according to our self-imposed, company-specific seniority structure if a pilot moves from one airline to the next, he or she has to completely start over.

Management at every airline completely understands this concept and has used it to to beat down wages to historically low levels. I'm afraid that we (pilots) are our own worst enemy.

Doctors and pilots are very similar in some respects. Both professions require long apprenticeship periods at relatively low income levels before reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. However, do you see doctors agreeing to accept seniority positions at a single hospital for the duration of their careers with the stipulation that if they move to another hospital at any time for the next 20 to 30 years that they have to start over from the bottom? That would be insane. Doctors would be at the mercy of hospital administrators.

Yet that is precisely the position pilots have put themselves in today. We are essentially at the mercy of management. I have read that the most important asset any negotiator has is the ability to walk away from a deal. Pilots have taken this most critical asset away from ourselves. We have beholden ourselves to management and given them all of the power in the negotiating process. Today, only the most desperate situation will compell a pilot to switch from one company to the next especially after he or she had been there for a few years.

Dogg, your posting is one of the most clear and lucid dissertations I have read on this board in a very long time. Amen to you, brother! We, as pilots, need to very seriously start thinking in your direction. In my view, it is one of the only feasible moves we can make to reverse the race to the bottom.

 

[FarginDooshbahg]

doggs "clear and lucid" thinking have left him bitter at being stuck in some prop driven POS making LESS than those guys he rails about flying RJs for pennies.

Yea, clear and lucid. Is that another term for lifetime loser?

 

[SirFlyALot]

Fargindooshbag,

Whatever Dogg's motivations for posting and whatever his position is within the airline industry, the overall effect of the current industry/union seniority system is to place virtually all of the power in the hands of management. With the power in management's hands, pilot wages have been driven to a low point and will continue to erode. On the other hand, a system that provided for "portability" would result in a rise in average pilot wages.

Are you so happy with your current position (whatever that is) that you are willing to give management the ability to pull the plug at any moment?

Until we (pilots) introduce some form of portability into our structure, we will continue to rob ourselves of virtually any real negotiating leverage. The current structure is one that was well-suited to the pre-deregulation airline world. We need to evolve. We, and our families, are the ones that will pay the price for our failure to do so.

 

[dogg]

doggs "clear and lucid" thinking have left him bitter at being stuck in some prop driven POS making LESS than those guys he rails about flying RJs for pennies.

Yea, clear and lucid. Is that another term for lifetime loser?[/QUOTE

Doosh, hmm is that a chord that I struck.....stuck driving some POS RJ....It sounds like you are in some boat headed up the river maybe...Upset that your career airplane is being staffed by wide-eyed college boys and girls in some "bridge program" that are "just happy to be there" whatever the cost..looking like walking models for Sporty's pilot shop....I grant you that the RJ for chump-change was a cheap shot and I apologize if that upset you...

My point remains however....we should be more like plumbers and electricians.....a pipe is a pipe and a wire is a wire and if your apprentice card or your journeyman card says that you can run it or pull it, you should not have to worry that the guys next door are doing for half of what you are doing it for or twice what you are doing it for.....and if you want more money you work in a region with higher COLA and you work overtime... you dont quit ACE and go to work for ACME....

The whole problem started when pilots forgot that they were BLUE collar workers and started thinking that they were WHITE collar workers...And started requiring a college degree to fly an airplane and started parading around in the terminals with there silly-asss WHITE collar uniforms, pretending that they were somehow still officers in the military or executives of the company and were above the mechs and fuelers and rampers....Well they weren't and we aren't and we will never be no matter how hard we try.....

I just had a thought from my time on the water..... Pilots of this day and age remind me of seagulls... we all look alike and when we fly we appear to be in concert but on land we bicker and fight and crap on each other and steal from each other and push and shove to try and get to the front first...searats we called them....

Back to the original thought....it is good to love your vocation and it is good to love where you practice your vocation and it is good to love the tools that you use in your vocation and it is good to practice your vocation with skill and pride but the second that you start talking about how great your employer is and how you worked your whole life just to get to that employer and your job is great because of your employer and the culture of your employer is what makes your job great etc. etc. etc, they will feed you all that back and you will be choking on that cool-aid for the rest of your career and it will taste like 2010 AK and you and in your own words that is going to be a nasty bitter taste

So remember- a 737 is a pipe wrench, it is the tool that you practice your trade with...and some companies have shiny new auto ratcheting, magnesium right angle pipe wrenches that are the latest in pipe wrench technology and some companies have well maintained and well oiled old style steel pipe wrenches and some companies have a box full of rusty junk....but it all pays the same regardless of which handle you are pulling on...and you can't be a shiny new apprentice or a burned out old journeyman and in order to get ahead work for less...that is a union, period and that should be the goal of every pilot young or old, period......