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Stop Degrading My Profession

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Jonny Sacko

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 22, 2005
Posts
748
[SIZE=-1]]White-collar workers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker
perform tasks which are less "physically laborious" yet often more highly paid than blue-collar workers, who do manual work. They are salaried professionals (such as some doctors or lawyers), as well as employees in administrative or clerical positions. In some studies, managers are considered as part of the white-collar worker grouping, in others they are not. The name derives from the traditional white shirts worn by workers of such professions. The white shirts are easily soiled and therefore distinguish the workers who "do not get their hands dirty."
Formerly a minority in the agrarian and early industrial societies, they have become a majority in industrialized countries. The recent technological revolution has created disproportionately more desk jobs, and lessened the number of employees doing manual work in factories. Generally, the pay rate is higher among white-collar workers, although many of the "white-collar" workers are not necessarily upper class or of privilege as the term once implied. For example, many jobs in the ever growing service sector have a high dress code despite their low pay, whereas ironically, many skilled manual trades-people earn comfortable middle-class salaries, although the jobs may be increasingly scarce.
Also, an increasing number of companies do not have any blue collar workers since they do not physically manufacture anything within their home country, but instead have an entire hierarchy of white collar desk workers who mostly dress the same. In this type of corporate environment, the ranking is less signified by the clothing, but may be strikingly apparent by the quality of the work space, the responsibilities delegated, the privileges granted, and by the salary itself.
In recent times workers have had varying degrees of latitude about their choice of dress. Dress codes can range from relaxed - with employees allowed to wear jeans and street clothes — up to traditional office attire. Many companies today operate in a business casual environment — where employees are required to wear dress pants or skirts and a shirt with a collar. Because of this, not all what would be called white collar workers in fact wear the traditional white shirt and tie.
As an example of workspace contrast, the higher ranking executives may have large corner offices with impressive views and expensive furnishings, where the lesser ranked desk clerks may share small, windowless cubicles with plain utilitarian furniture. As an example of the differing responsibilities, the higher ranked worker will usually have a more broad and fundamental responsibility in the company whereas the subordinates will be delegated more specific, and limited tasks. The cases of differing privilege and salary speak for themselves.
At some companies, the "white collar employees" also on occasion perform "blue collar" tasks (or vice versa), and even change their clothing to perform the distinctive roles, ie. dressing up or dressing down as the case requires. This is common in the food service industry. An example would be a manager at a restaurant who may wear more formal clothing than lower-ranked employees, yet still sometimes assist with cooking food or taking customers' orders. Employees of event catering companies often wear formal clothing when serving food.
As salaried employees, white-collar workers are sometimes members of white-collar labor unions and they can resort to strike action to settle grievances with their employers, when collective bargaining fails. This is far more the case in Europe than in the United States, where less than 10 percent of all private sector employees are union members. White-collar workers have a reputation for being skeptical or opposed to unions, and tend to see their advancement in work as tied to their reaching corporate goals rather than in union membership.
[/B]

Blue-collar worker

In the United States, a blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who performs manual labor and earns an hourly wage. Blue-collar workers are distinguished from service workers and from white-collar workers, whose jobs are not considered manual labor; additionally, white-collar workers earn an annual salary rather than an hourly wage. Blue collar work may be skilled or unskilled, and may involve factory work, building and construction trades, law enforcement, mechanical work, maintenance or technical installations. The white-collar worker, by contrast, performs non-manual labor often in an office; and the service industry worker performs non-manual labor involving customer interaction, entertainment, retail and outside sales, and the like. Some service industry workers differ as they perform tasks that are mostly unskilled in the service sector. [1]
The term blue-collar occasionally carries a stereotype based on historical perspective, but is rarely perceived to be a negative one. The blue-collar worker in the United States is an embodiment of the American mythos of a work ethic and the dignity of labor. [2] Some blue-collar jobs, such as those of janitors and assembly line workers, may carry negative stereotypes from perceptions that they represent minimal ability. Most involve levels of specialized skill that carry no stigma, and are contrarily a source of pride.



Pilots are salaried. We contract for a minimum salary each month, plus commission, bonus, overs, profit sharing, etc =(flying over guarantee)

Blue collar workers go to work and get paid ONLY IF THEY WORK

The next negotiation you are in, DON"T DEGRADE OUR PROFESSION, DEMAND MORE, STAND UP, IT'S TIME!!![/SIZE]
The management has done everything in their power to push us into menial laboring category, or blue collar to pay us LESS!
 
Don't look to your fellow pilots to keep OUR profession from being degraded. The American Elite has put into place rules that keep the worker (white collar or otherwise) down. Learn these rules and learn how to do well within their guidelines.

Look at how the railway labor act is being trotted out to stimy the NWA F/A's. Blame it on what you will--The President, Congress, The elite that run this country, or the many judges who want labor crushed. Self help is SEVERLY restricted. The executives at companies get protection from us.

You want to stop the degradation? Change the law or go work for a company with little likelyhood of chipping away at your paycheck and work rules. Look at a prospective employer like an investor.
 
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With the above definition, pilots are blue-collar.

When a "white collar" worker stays late at work, he receives exactly the same check. When he doesn't come to work, he receives exactly the same check. Big difference from pilots. Sad but true.
 
QXpeon said:
Vote the anti-labor bastards out in November.

Well that would be 535 Congressional folks and how ever many Senators that are up this year.
 
SDF2BUF2MCO said:
Well that would be 535 Congressional folks and how ever many Senators that are up this year.

I'm glad somebody understands that.
 
Wake up!!

SkiFishFly said:
Yeah - I really want higher taxes so some idiot in DC can spend it on more social programs....

Government spending and our deficit are at record highs, and the so-called "tax & spend" democrats aren't in power.
 
SDF2BUF2MCO said:
Well that would be 535 Congressional folks and how ever many Senators that are up this year.

Tell me you meant to say "435 Representatives and 100 Senators...." The total is 535.

And you call yourself an American.....:)


stlflyguy
 
Aren't guys who willingly accept a position driving an RJ for $18,000 -$22,000 per year degrading the profession?
 
stlflyguy said:
Tell me you meant to say "435 Representatives and 100 Senators...." The total is 535.

And you call yourself an American.....:)


stlflyguy

Thank you for the correction. I can't even use the excuse, "I'm from Kentucky", on that one.
 
It's the most brilliant thing big business ever did in this country - knock down the labor movement to the point where workers BLAME EACH OTHER for their demise.

Imagine if it had happened in the old days - "Yeah, Mr. Ford has his workers in there 60 hours a week with no benefits. If those guys would just quit degrading our workplace by taking those jobs...."
 
SkiFishFly said:
Yeah - I really want higher taxes so some idiot in DC can spend it on more social programs....

Very sophisticated train of thought going on here, watch Fox news much?
 
SkiFishFly said:
Yeah - I really want higher taxes so some idiot in DC can spend it on more social programs....
Hmm... a much better idea is to keep doing it the way we do now- keep taxes low, spending high and just borrow the difference. Hey- we won't have to pay it off; let our kids worry about it.

Are these the same people who have 25k of credit card debt and are picking out wide-screen LCD's?
 
SkiFishFly said:
PLease tell us all how wise and sophisticated you are. Please share with us uneducated masses....

I didn't mean to imply that I am sophisticated, but it seems like we're spending a lot of money that we don't have right now, regardless of whether or not we are collecting any tax revenue. The Fox News remark was an obvious barb, and meant to ridicule the fact that Murdoch's political views are expressed relentlessly, while being touted as fair and balanced reporting. We report (and tell you how to feel) and you decide (after we make sure to tell what to think). My opinions only...
 
Gov says blue-collar

I think this same article was posted on another thread a long time ago. I thought I would post it here to show how the government views the job.

House Considers Measure to Cut Billions in Pension Obligations
by Mary Williams Walsh
</B>

A bill pending in the House of Representatives would allow businesses with union workers to reduce their company pension obligations by billions of dollars, because statistics show that most blue-collar workers do not live as long as other Americans.
The provision, which has gone largely unnoticed in a broad pension bill, is being supported by the United Auto Workers and manufacturing companies whose pension funds now have assets far short of what they are projected to need under previous assumptions about worker longevity.
The measure would allow companies to assume that their blue-collar workers will on average die sooner than pension plans now assume they will. So companies, not having to plan to pay future blue-collar pensions as long as they now do, would not be required to put aside as much pension money as government regulations now require them to do.
But the leader of a panel that developed the actuarial data on which the new provision is based said he had written to the Treasury Department, which regulates pension funds, to express concern that the data were being misapplied.
Edwin C. Hustead, chairman of the actuarial panel, said in an interview he was concerned that the data were being used in an improper way. White-collar workers are shown by statistics to live longer, he said, but the bill would not require companies to factor that into their pension calculations. If it were included, unionized companies with largely white-collar workers would have to set aside more to fulfill their promises to retirees in the future.
In addition, Mr. Hustead said workers' pay had been shown to be a more powerful predictor of life expectancy than whether a worker was blue collar or white collar, but the bill did not recognize that higher-paid workers live longer and therefore require longer pension payouts. Many auto workers and airline pilots are classified as blue collar in the bill, because they are covered by collective bargaining agreements, even though they are highly paid. Aides to the bill's sponsors said they were unaware that the measure had overlooked these other significant mortality factors. A spokeswoman for Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said the congressman's goal was to help preserve the system of traditional pensions. A spokesman for Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the bill was intended to make sure companies "aren't forced to overpay" into their pension funds.
"The pension system is a voluntary system, and if you force companies to artificially put more into their plan than is needed, that is a real disincentive," he said.
The United Auto Workers wrote a letter in support of the provision, according to people with ties to Congress, apparently in hopes that the money that companies saved from pensions could be used for higher wages. The Erisa Industry Committee, which represents large companies, helped with the bill but was primarily interested in supporting another measure on the interest rates used in pension calculations, said Janice Gregory, a vice president of the committee.
With most pension plans now underfunded, Mr. Hustead and some other actuaries fear that a reduction in contributions could increase the risk of defaults, at a time when companies are already defaulting on their pension plans at a greatly accelerated rate.
"I do not agree that the tables should be adjusted for differences between mortality for blue-collar and white-collar employees," Mr. Hustead wrote to Treasury, which regulates how companies set aside money to cover pension promises.
After spending five years collecting and analyzing data for the new mortality table, Mr. Hustead warned that his panel's findings seemed at risk of being used in a "curious" and "arbitrary" way. He said in an interview that he had not received any response from the Treasury.
The issue of worker life spans can be traced to the early 1990's, when pension plans were also strained, although far less so than today. Companies at that time were free to select any mortality rate when calculating their current pension obligations, and some were discovered to be using unusually high death rates, so as to shrink their pension debt.
In 1994, Congress required all companies with pension plans to use the same mortality table, or set of probability factors for death rates.
At the time, the table in common use was from 1983. So the Society of Actuaries, a professional group that engages in research and education, convened a committee to prepare a new table, based on current demographic trends. Mr. Hustead, who is also a senior vice president of the Hay Group, was the chairman.
Normally, actuarial proceedings are quiet affairs that make few waves, but Mr. Hustead said this one was different. "There were some very strong opinions, for an actuarial group," he recalled. "We've done mortality studies in the past, and you go out and do your study, and come back and say, `Here it is,' and just start using it."
The group decided to create a base mortality table, then test a number of factors to see what effect they might have on the death rates. One test was to examine whether the color of one's collar had any effect. The group defined blue collar as people who were represented by unions or who were paid by the hour — a definition that turns such unlikely workers as unionized athletes, airline pilots, aerospace engineers and even some newspaper reporters into blue-collar workers.
Separately, the committee tested to see whether pensioners' incomes affected their mortality rates.
After analyzing 11 million "life years," the committee could see that the color of the collar and the income level affected life span significantly. Blue-collar workers and the poorly paid both tended to die young. White-collar workers and the well-paid tended to live longer.
But even after trying multiple regressions and hiring an outside panel of academics, the committee was unable to find a statistically valid way of handling those workers who did not fit the patterns — those who were "blue collar," but who also happened to be well paid.
In such cases, Mr. Hustead said, the data showed that money has such power to lengthen human life that it more than offsets the blue-collar life-shortening effect.
But not everyone on the committee wanted this point included in the final report, Mr. Hustead said.
"There were those who wanted to use the higher mortality rates for `blue collar,' but who did not want to use any lower mortality for `high paid,' which would be like the auto industry," he said.
In the end, the society published the new table in a report that alluded to its members' difficulties in the treatment of these adjustments.
Its work completed, the society then passed the table to its sister organization, the American Academy of Actuaries, which has the responsibility of representing actuarial interests in Washington.
The academy concluded that what it called the "collar adjustment" was statistically sound. But it rejected the society's adjustment for income level, saying current trends make that adjustment suspect.
Mr. Hustead said he was concerned that the same forces that had caused dissent within his own committee had traveled to the academy. He recalled that one actuary on his committee, who had forcefully opposed any adjustment of death rates by income, had also participated in the academy's deliberations.
"At one time in the middle of this process, I asked him, `Are you working for one of the auto companies?' " Mr. Hustead recalled. The actuary, Vincent Amoroso, said he was not.
In an interview, Mr. Amoroso said he had, in fact, represented auto companies at the time when Congress was requiring that all companies use the same mortality table. But he said he ended those consulting relationships before the new mortality table was released in 2000.
"I had not had any connection to the auto companies, in a consulting capacity, since 1996," said Mr. Amoroso, who is now with the consulting firm of Towers Perrin.
Mr. Amoroso added that he had volunteered to serve on the Society of Actuaries' committee because he wanted "to make sure that everybody behaves fair."
"It turned out I was just aghast at the raw, political partisanship of it all," he said.
He added that he felt that the committee had an established membership and ingrained habits of mind, and treated him and his ideas as less than welcome because he was "the new kid on the block." "Who would have thought there would be such a melodrama in a mortality table's construction?"

If you want to change your job, keep this in mind when you vote. You can't have the best of both worlds (last I checked). Either you vote with pro-labor candidates or you vote pro-business candidates. Unless you are the CEO, CFO or Pres. of the airline you fly for, you are the labor.
 
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Where's a link for verification, so I can send this to WORTHLESS with a note to stick it up his ass before he gets blown out of his bu!!sh!t job. He's the only Blue-Collar worker, at least until he get booted for inaction/declining industry/self-centered "pension only"/non-uniform wearing (Only suits now)/WORTHLESS Piece Of Sh!t.

We can not allow these idiots to ruin our careers anymore, it will continue for all of us unless we scream LOUD! C'mon

Worthless is a piece of useless SH!T
 
If you want to change your job, keep this in mind when you vote. You can't have the best of both worlds (last I checked). Either you vote with pro-labor candidates or you vote pro-business candidates. Unless you are the CEO, CFO or Pres. of the airline you fly for, you are the labor.

Call it a Republican, call it a Democrat: it still has more money than you and will never see eye to eye with the working masses.
 
Tell me you meant to say "435 Representatives and 100 Senators...." The total is 535.

And you call yourself an American.....:)


stlflyguy

As long as we're having a civics discussion, only 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for election each two years along with every House seat.....
 
If it depends on the Congressmen, then the key is to get as many in Congress that favor pilot legislation....

So, how do we do that? :)



This isn't about you (the reader) trying to get the system to understand how you think.....

It is about you (the reader) understanding how the system works....
 
It's the most brilliant thing big business ever did in this country - knock down the labor movement to the point where workers BLAME EACH OTHER for their demise.

Imagine if it had happened in the old days - "Yeah, Mr. Ford has his workers in there 60 hours a week with no benefits. If those guys would just quit degrading our workplace by taking those jobs...."

Probably one of the best posts I've seen on here in a while....excluding my own of course. ;)
 
The United Auto Workers wrote a letter in support of the provision, according to people with ties to Congress, apparently in hopes that the money that companies saved from pensions could be used for higher wages.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

If they truly think this will happen, they need to put the crack pipe down.

You know exactly where that money will go......yep....right into the pockets of the executives.
 

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