Ellen,
Good post. There's some good foresight in that post. There's lots of things that could happen and should happen in our chosen career paths. Some we can change some we can't. Like Seatownflyer I barely made 11k last year as a flight instructor so right now 19 looks pretty good. It's almost double what I have now. I'm a single male who can live on ramen noodles and rice and has done that before when I was a student teacher.
I know how easy it is to see JETS and get all googly eyed even with what some would say is a crap salary. But still (and I'm not saying the pay is great) it is only one year. Second year isn't that great but look at upgrade times right now. 2 years and then what does the pay jump too? And then with the rate at which pilots are retiring from the majors a "new" pilot can get licked up from the regional and then is he still on food stamps or where does his salaray go then? There's dues to pay. I'm paying them, I'm gonna pay them with a smile on my face (not cause I think the ceo needs another town house) but because I know that every pilot in front of me had to go through the same thing I'm doing now. It's all in how someone looks at something. Is the glass half full or half empty. Do we complain about everything just to complain? Isn't there a lot more that we can worry about like our customers the passengers? Can't we focus on why we HAVE a job in the first place?
I'm not coming down on anyone this is just where I see it now. who knows it may change.
I've sat 6 months waiting to go back to Skywest for several reasons. One of them being this. They don't have a Union. This says something about management. If a union was needed there'd be one. The failure of the union drives over the past few years tells me that the pilots feel that someone in management actually cares. Not like some other places where management is there to kill the pilot group and the only thing holding them back is the threat of strikes from the unions. I don't work for jerks and that's how the union vs management issue comes across to me.