Pilot pay!!??

[yaks]

Guild sounds good to me although impractical to implement. The real answer is to raise the cost of entry into the field. Every CFI needs to be making 25 or 30 bucks per hour with benefits and holiday pay. Every flight school should charge enough to maintain their planes in top condition, install appropriate technology for the phase of training, and ensure a reasonable profit for the owner. Price for an ATP would increase substantially and cause those thinking about entering the field to think twice considering the current state of the industry and trend in pay. How many doctors do you think there would be if they had 30-40K annual salaries to look forward to after their 10 year education and 150K in student loans?

 

[FDJ2]

FDJ2

You may as well complain about the rain ruining your saturday afternoon.

You will NEVER, EVER get people to stop trying to improve their position, even if that means taking a low-paying job.


QUOTE]

Philo, I'm not complaining. I'm pointing out the obvious. The fact of the matter is that their is an endless supply of young eager pilots willing to do it all for less. So I guess we are in agreement.

 

[philo beddoe]

By the way, the guild idea sounds good to me. Where do I sign up?

FDJ2- I think our only hope is to try to reach these youngsters before they make a bad decision. The collective political power of ALPA could be used to this effect, I think. But are all of us willing to volunteer time to speak to these kids and enlighten them? I'm willing to volunteer.

 

[pilotyip]

Look at UAW

The guild will kinda be like the UAW and the big three. The UAW made the auto companies pay or the UAW would not play. Now the UAW mmebership is the smallest since like 1950, there is almost no jobs available in the good UAW job ranks and now comes the union B scale for UAW workers. The public demand for travel on the airlines is elastic, price goes up riders go down, just like auto buyers are elastic. Perceived value for the $'s of the big three auto goes down, purchases of big three auto goes down and the auto jobs disappear and do not come back. The guild can to the same for the airline industry; we will go back to 1977, where the pilot ranks were about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of today’s airline pilot numbers. The guys who have a job will be paid well the other 75% will probably do all right, but not in flying airplanes. Besides some foreign airline would hire non-guild pilots and steal market share. No one has repealed the law of supply and demand. OBTW, how many guild supporters drive non-big three cars?

 

[thav8r]

Yepp….great idea. Lets get the Government involved and tell them how bad things are. Maybe we can make a reasonable trade. We would support the end of the no-cabotage rule in exchange for instituting a national union.



Lest we forget, that our industry is in fact still regulated and to the extent that we are one of the few Industries that by legislation prevents foreign competition. The truckers said it would never happen to them and look at what occurred as part of NAFTA.



Beyond that, look at the bruising fight between DHL/UPS/FedEx? That was the first salvo in foreign ownership of US certificates. That is not going away and will more than likely become the major battle that threatens our profession.



JetBlue and similar carriers isn’t the enemy, nor are any of the domestic carriers. Before this is all over with, our competition will be external not internal.



Imagine our Industry when/if JAL gets to pick up local traffic and fly from LAX-ORD while Air France picks up local traffic from ORD-DEN?



You say it can’t happen? Look at the docket arguments from DHL in their citizenship fight.

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

You would still be free to go work for a non-guild company (and essentially become a scab) but you will then become a "lifer" there as you ain't gonna build time or get current and move on. So after a while there would be pressure to get your pay and work rules up for the sake of your own QOL. Sure you would have a few 55 year olds who would do it without fear of reprisal, but this would nip most of the intern/bridge program/young eager pilot willing to get to the majors "by any means necessary" which is one of, if not THE, biggest negative forces pulling our industry down right now.

Interesting. I believe that other, bigger, forces are to blame. After all, who is standing up for the workers in the telecom industry. I think most of those folks either accepted the lower wages or went elsewhere.

America is addicted to cheap products sold at Walmart. We also drive foreign cars. Why? We thought we were getting "screwed" by the higher cost American products. In that case I think the unions asked for too high a wage. They were drunk in their new found power and did not trust their corrupt management. (Sounds like UAL, DAL) The cars were crappy and expensive. The UAW also helped set in motion forces of change that we now have trouble stopping. Or they were just one of the first victims.

Every American dreams of getting/keeping his or her high paying job while benefiting from the cheap products available from globalization. Why is globalization the new found religion? Growth. The US Economy, Corporations, bank accounts, stock portfolios...they all have to have it. When you want growth you have to beat someone else out. By cost or value added.

The reality is too many Americans are losing their jobs and seeing their income drop when they find employment again. The net effect is a lower standard of living. So the search for lower cost gets even more intense in the chase for the dollar of lower paid workers.

Those that really benefit are America's elite as they continue to reallocate resources and build wealth as we lose ours. A classic struggle that is nothing new and will always continue. Will tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy? Sure...the global economy....and the bank accounts of the wealthy.

Good luck in your struggle against the Walmarts of the world.

 

[SDF2BUF2MCO]

Some good points FlyBoeing. Wonder if the CEO of Chinamart and/or the board would like it if the shareholders demanded a foreign CEO and board members so as to lower the costs of investing in Chinamart? It would be in the name of shareholder value.

Seems like guberment and the entainment biz are the two areas that aren't suffering (yet). Pretty bad when entertainment is on the top of the export list. Not a substantive and/or foundational type business.

Realize American companies aren't obligated to ensure the well being of the American worker but I'm not obligated to buy their Chinese made stuff either. Globalization does not benefit the common man despite the media's efforts to convince us otherwise.

Bentonville, Arkansas will soon have their own Chinatown...that's progress! Oh well, at least our freedom loving friends are making University of Arkansas baseball caps rather than nuclear weapons right?

 

[MLBWINGBORN]

Pay rates based ONLY on seat size is really stupid, as the above post points out nicely.

What is needed is a fixed base rate, lets say something like $50 per hour for a 30-seat t-prop CA. THEN we increase based on # of seats, kind of like a pay override.

An ALPA-determined national minimum pay rate would solve a lot of problems, and push lowball carriers to pay up or shut down.

Hey, I like that for a contract negotiations slogan.

Pay up or shut down!

Sounds sorta like "max pay to the last day".

Be careful of what you wish for..Someone will give it to you and laugh all the way to the bank..