FlyDeltasJets said:
Jeff,
I'm sorry if you found insult in my post.
None taken at all. I only intended to show the futility of taking a "moral" stance on working for a regional or LCC. You can take the "prostitution" theme too far, and that crosses the line. I'm as frustrated as you are, and as I said, I don't have any answers. I can see the writing on the wall, but don't know what can be done differently. No doubt boy wonders like 737G would just have us quit, and tread water at Home Depot (no wait, I'll just jump into a $125k/yr job until it blows over...) until a truly "worthy" job comes along, but that's not reasonable either.
Besides, all things considered, I really like what I do and the company I work for. I would probably stay even if everyone else was hiring by the bucketloads. That probably makes me weird from your standpoint; it certainly doesn't make me a "prostitute." Will I think differently in ten or twenty years? I don't know. I'll let you know in ten or twenty years. Unfortunately, very few of us are gifted with that kind of foresight, and I'm not one of them.
As far as the "race to the bottom" is concerned, I agree there is currently a lot of downward pressure on wages and working conditions, some of it coming from LCC's, but by no means all. Much of the industry is in survival mode, and emergency surgery is in progress to try to save the patient. But nobody stays in surgery forever (unfortunately some die first), and the dynamics are such that I don't think there will be an accelerating trend downward. There is always upward pressure, but for the moment it's not as critical as survival. When survival is no longer in doubt, then it will reassert itself. This is a deep low, yes, but still part of a cycle. IMHO of course. The details differ every time, but it's still the same pattern.
The trick is timing the cycle. United had lousy timing, and got their raise through methods that utterly alienated their customer base. They're paying for that mistake now. Delta is in much better shape, though it came a year later and was worth more. It's a stronger company, and DALPA didn't cause a summer from hell. In a way, it's a shame that contracts continue in perpetuity until amended under the RLA because in so many cases the timing favors management. After cuts, payback out to be due, but they can string you out for years under cut wages, then claim poverty (after years of record profits!) when they finally get around to negotiating seriously. Naturally, it only makes the pilots look greedy when they want their pay back, especially what times aren't so good anymore. Everyone conveniently forgets past sacrifices. I wonder if the ratcheting down of "real" wages has more to do with this dynamic (long periods of cuts, shorter periods of raises) than anything else. If there was a way to smooth the cycle, or react more quickly to market conditions (with wages somewhat tied to performance instead of locked in for 5-7 years at a time) instead of lagging by several years, that would help a great deal. It would take a lot of trust on all sides to make it work. Just thinking out loud, I could be way off.
