Originally Posted by
Night Hawk 6
The current system of labor representation has worked so well that today's pilots are working much longer, for less pay, with even fewer medical and retirement benefits than pilots received over thirty years ago. Maybe it is time, actually it is way past time, to consider, no, create a new way of doing business. The politics, tactics and technologies have changed dramatically since ALPA was formed in ---- (How many of you actually know when ALPA was formed?) yet ALPA is almost unchanged from its earliest design. ALPA, along with all of the other non affiliated pilot associations, has permitted the airline pilot profession to sink to the level of bus drivers, and my apologies to bus drivers. If you like the way things are heading today and you like being firmly planted in the middle class for most of your career do nothing. Be a "sheeple" and echo the pilot mantra, "There is nothing I can do about it, anyhow at least I have a job." Yep you make every airline CEO get a warm fuzzy every time you express this thought. Very sad.
You forgot to mention one thing: no shortage of prospective pilots willing to work for any amount of pay (in some cases, paying the airline - PFT) because, as most of them put it, "flying a jet is so cool!!!"
Universities and flight academies who constantly tell prospective students about "pilot shortages" while bombarding them with pictures of wide-body airliners and stories of the exotic lifestyle of an international airline captain are probably more to blame than airline managers. Airline managers are just doing their jobs and I honestly cannot blame them. Pilots willing to sell their own souls for the opportunity to fly the latest and greatest jet are the ones who give airline managers the ability to do what they do.
If anyone does not believe me, then peruse the Regional forum and take note of how many people constantly complain about the pay and QOL and then in the same breath put down every other profession because flying is the best job in the world. Yeah, most of these guys cannot afford to support their own families, but what the heck, beats working in a cubicle, right?!