Originally Posted by
Ar Pilot
^^In my experience flying with senior guys. Hell no they wouldn't agree to that. Even if you just made a 4yr FO pay scale, took $2'from each captain step and distributed it equally over those 4 years, they wouldn't do it.
The US has some of the lowest cost of living of any developed country. Also, I'm sure everyone knows this, but $50k is the average HOUSEHOLD income in the US.
Now sure I think pilots should definitely get paid more than we do, but let's keep things in perspective. I think 45-60k is a fair wage for sitting right seat in an RJ and many guys who are off of first year pay can achieve that with extra effort. The key is allowing us to get that 45-60k on minimum credit. That's what we should be negotiating for.
I don't think anyone here is saying that 60k would be an acceptable wage for the right seat of an RJ or Dash.
What we need to NOT do, is shoot for a nationwide average. I found this interesting article recently...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/up...hest.html?_r=1
Pay particular attention to the little table with percentages of income change since 2000. In the US, it's 0.3%. So on average, the middle class of this country has received a 0.3% increase in pay since 2000. Also since 2000, the value of the dollar is about 73% of what it was. So most of us have taken roughly a 27% hit to our buying power.
Don't shoot for a stagnated nationwide average, shoot for pay increases that match or outpace inflation.
As to the last few posts.... Reducing the pay of anyone is not an acceptable answer. If you want your FO's to make more money, find out why the gap between the two pay scales is so large. I know at least a few of the contributing factors... If your company is like mine, pay changes are usually negotiated at percentages. So if you get a 3% raise, a captain making 100 bucks gets an extra 3, while the FO making 40 bucks gets an extra... 1 dollar and 20 cents. For anyone but the maxed-out Captains, it's a bad idea to negotiate that way. Rather, we should be negotiating dollar amount increases. Every part of the payscale gets increased by $2. If the company wants percentages, do the math on what 3% would come out to if you applied it as an equal dollar amount to each step of the scale. Everyone still gets a raise, and it's actually applied fairly. There's no reason for the company to balk at this type of increase, as long as the percentages of the total are within their budget. This wouldn't bring the scales closer together, in dollar amounts, but it would if you calculate as percentages. It just depends on how you want to do the math. At least with a system like this, the gulf wouldn't be always getting larger.
This is what we need to be after our unions about.... be
better at negotiating.