Originally Posted by
disillusioned
You mean jobs where you are paid for your experience and performance? Where your raises and promotions are based on your work and not just what day you started with the company? Where you can leave one job making a certain salary and not have to start completely over when you move jobs? I have worked outside the airlines and in those jobs a union wouldn't make sense.
Unfortunately, in the airline business everything is based on seniority. That is why it is so bad when it is violated here. I'm not preaching for a union. I'm just saying that this industry is one where we need protections. At the very minimum we need the protection of an enforceable contract. Management at SGU has a contract to protect them and I just think we should have the same.
I am still not sure union make sense. They are a phenomenon of the past - area of early industrialization. There are plenty of business - in fact the majority of free enterprises - that work just fine or better without a union. Look at what unions have done to the manufacturing sector in the US and most recently the automotive industry. It took major bail outs and all the job growth is the the south with Japanese and European manufacturers without a union.
Not being able to switch jobs at the appropriate level and having to start over at the bottom is only related to the seniority system. And that is self-induced as in pilot induced. It is probably not gonna change ever but our own doing.
As for being paid for experience ... That is also a little misleading. People are generally paid for productivity. In many sectors that relates to experience to some extend.
However, we are naturally limited. We fly 50 passengers (or 76 as the case may be). And it doesn't really matter if you have been in your seat for 2 years or 10 years. The productivity is the same.
Productivity goes up as seat count goes up ... and maybe stage length.