kfahmi

You are indeed correct; I've spent the past 18 years in corporate America. However, salaried jobs are just that -- salaried. There is no pretense of paying an hourly rate. You're paid a certain amount per year, and you certainly don't clock in or out. The airline industry is different in that we are allegedly paid an hourly rate for our time.

And yet it is perfectly acceptable in this industry for one to be paid for 4 hours when one was available to the company for more than three times that number.

I just don't get it. How did we, as pilots, decide that the only time worth being compensated for is the time between door close and door open? It's an honest question. I don't know the answer. I'm just curious as to how the industry came to adopt such practices.

Didn't a group of policemen recently sue and win a class-action suit because they weren't being paid for the first 30 minutes they reported to work (such time was used for changing clothes in the locker room, catching up on daily briefs, etc., before hitting the street.) How are we any different?