The first step, since your expectations were wrong, is to reconcile your expectations. What were your expectations based on? Fear? Emotion? Reason? Objectivity? Subjectivity? you've already stated that 'you've earned it'... suggesting an emotionally biased expectation. With that... how is the JNC supposed to please you? And then... what about the rest of us....? 'we've earned it too...'



As I sated before, despite your dig, I think I am worth more, but a point you refuse to address.... how you were going to get a better deal...


The Entitlement Mentality
By Capt. Joe Doniach (United)
Years ago, then-United CEO Glenn Tilton said something about how he wanted to get rid of the “entitlement mentality” of United employees. Of course, his remark was extremely offensive, especially since he said this while using the airline’s bankruptcy to gut our contracts. But in my opinion he was absolutely correct. The employees did (and still do) have an entitlement mentality, and until we pilots (I will only speak here for my own occupation) rid ourselves of this dangerous delusion, we will be condemned to make the same mistakes over and over that have brought about the destruction of our profession.

In my 30+ years as an airline pilot, I have heard time and again why we should be well paid, even as our average pay has declined 42 percent over that same period. My answer is always, “Why? What makes you think you are worth more than a third-world pilot who makes one-tenth what you do? What makes you think you are worth more than the regional pilot to whom your captain’s seat was outsourced?” The response is usually huffing and puffing about how experience, skill, and an excellent safety record should be properly rewarded.

Again, my question is, Why? There’s no economic justification for these things. Sure, when the ship is going down in flames, passengers want highly skilled and experienced pilots with excellent safety records to be at the controls, but it’s not possible to justify these items in economic terms, at least not until a tipping point is reached.

Every union airline pilot should know that the high pay scales of the past had absolutely nothing to do with our abilities as pilots. Nothing! The high pay scales of previous contracts were the result of the prescience and persistence of Dave Behncke and the founders of ALPA nearly 80 years ago. Thanks to their skill in lobbying the Roosevelt administration and the U.S. Congress, a mandatory formula for airline pilot pay was codified by the 1933 National Recovery Administration (NRA). On the principle that pilots should benefit from productivity increases (pay to productivity), the formula tied pay to aircraft speed. The formula was appealed by the airlines, but it was upheld by an administrative law judge in what is known as Decision 83.

After the NRA was nullified by the U.S. Supreme Court, ALPA convinced Congress to include the Decision 83 formula in the 1934 Air Mail Act and then the 1938 Civil Aeronautics Act. In the late 1940s, the formula was expanded to include weight in addition to speed. The benefits of the Decision 83 formula paid off handsomely when the first generation of jets—the B-707 and the DC-8—began flying in the late fifties and early sixties. With the jets having gross weights and speeds nearly double those of their piston-engined predecessors, pilots flying them were paid rates that were a huge increase over the previous rates, because the new jets were so much more productive.

Decision 83 set the standard—that pilots should be paid according to productivity—in all ALPA contracts, and indeed throughout the world, because ALPA in the United States was for so many years the world leader in airline pilot labor union negotiations.

And therein lies the problem. Most pilots forgot, or never knew, all this Decision 83 stuff. They simply thought that we were worth so much because we graduated No. 1 in our class at the Air Force Academy or because daddy paid our way through Embry-Riddle or because we worked our way up the civilian aviation ladder or because we haven’t caused a passenger fatality since 1978. In other words, they think we are entitled to a decent station in life because of who we are.

Think about this the next time you are bouncing along in the tops at 35,000 feet and you see the little specks of corporate jets flying above all the weather at 50,000 feet: CEOs don’t make the mistake of thinking they are entitled to their monstrous salaries. They know that they make what they do because of the rules that dictate how our society is organized. And that is the answer to why we were paid high salaries in the past, and why those salaries have shrunk. It is because of the rules that determine how our society is organized, i.e., here in the United States, the laws passed by the U.S. Congress. Those rules, those regulations, are everything. Deregulation? There ain’t no such thing. All that the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act did was get rid of one set of rules and replace them with another.

The top 1 percent of the United States—the CEO class, the new oligarchy—now owns more than the bottom 90 percent of the United States because they exploit the rules of this country to the maximum extent that they can get away with. (And I’m not just talking about the laws, I’m talking about the rules, rules such as not pursuing tax cheats, etc.) We pilots do the same—we exploited the 30 years of airline regulation to the maximum extent possible, and we are now trying to exploit the pathetic remnants of rules (the Railway Labor Act, the FARs) that still govern our economic well-being. That we have not yet been able to reverse the decline in any meaningful way is not an indication of our failure in the area of labor negotiations—it just demonstrates that those rules are stacked against us. But blaming ALPA for those failures in and of itself is a failure—a failure to understand how our societal rules have changed.

Unintended or not, the consequence of Decision 83 was a positive feedback loop in which the high pay of the airline piloting profession attracted extremely capable, talented, high-achieving people who were, and continue to be, the main reason for the industry’s superb safety record. As is clear from the range of endeavors of those who have been furloughed, people who become airline pilots would be at the top of whatever profession they chose to pursue. The airline industry and the traveling public have benefited immensely from this dynamic, but, although it has taken many years to sink in, the allure of the profession is fading, and it no longer attracts the sort of candidates of the past. Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger spoke for all of us in his testimony before Congress when he said that he does “…not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps.”

Capt. Sullenberger went on to say, “I am worried that the airline piloting profession will not be able to continue to attract the best and the brightest. The current experience and skills of our country’s professional airline pilots come from investments made years ago when we were able to attract the ambitious, talented people who now frequently seek lucrative professional careers. That past investment was an indispensible element in our commercial aviation infrastructure, vital to safe air travel and our country’s economy and security. If we do not sufficiently value the airline piloting profession and future pilots are less experienced and less skilled, it logically follows that we will see negative consequences to the flying public—and to our country.”

In the end, it all comes down to the question of how we want to organize our society. Do we want to live in a banana republic, a third-world country, the new Russia? Or do we want to live in a country with a strong, egalitarian middle class? The iconic middle-class existence of 1950s America didn’t come about because Americans are more deserving than other people. It came about because the Americans of the 1930s and 1940s had had enough of a society that allowed a few to prosper mightily while everyone else ate their crumbs, and they elected politicians who passed laws that gave everyone a chance to live out their lives in dignity and security. We had what we had because our predecessors fought for those things, and we lost what we had because we came to believe that we were entitled to them.