Originally Posted by
AboveAndBeyond
That is how every other industry works, why should the airlines be different? If I have a plumbing business, or a restaurant, or any other business, I can choose to cut the benefits of employees if I want to. They can leave then if they want to. That is how the real world works.
The trick is that most companies do not want to lose their employees. It takes time and money to train new employees, and takes months if not years to get them up to the level of my current employees. What makes the airlines different is the whole seniority thing. I understand that you think that it is different based on seniority, but you CHOSE to become a pilot and work in a profession which places such a huge value on seniority. Once you took the job, with the understanding of how the system worked, you accepted it. Complaining about it after the fact is like buying a car and then complaining to the dealer that it is red. You bought it, it is not their fault.
That's true to a certain degree.
But the Eagle guys have a contract that's good for at least a few more years and pilots are in short supply.
Using your example.
Lets say you went to work for a restaurant as a chef.
The hourly rate was set for at least the next few years, even in the face of a chef shortage.
About six months into the gig, you find that the boss is a drunk and his boy toy is a cross dresser.
But when he asks you to take it in a$$; 'cause his other two chefs like it, do you gladly get drunk, don a dress, take it in the can, then get a DUI on the way home as you pass through the school zone?