Originally Posted by
1900luxuryliner
The problem is, if you are not Management (which I find very hard to believe), your sentiments echo sentiments I have heard from our management! Literally, word for word! You brought up the idea of peers; that we will never achieve more than our peers. To be clear, I believe our peers are every US carrier that operates the A320 series of aircraft. Period! What we do, as pilots, is what United does, is what Delta does, is what every US carrier does in an A320 series.
Management would like you to believe that only the lowest paid carriers are our "peers". That we are some sort of "lower tier" of pilot, based on our current wages. How convenient, and how insulting! Concessions were taken in attempts to keep the company alive (right or wrong), and now they denigrate us based on our wages!
The truth is, most of the lower paid carriers are lower paid, because they are a contract cycle, or even two contract cycles behind the Legacy carriers. Most are actively negotiating better contracts as we speak. Their current pay scales are extremely outdated, and, in many cases, were modeled after prevailing LEGACY CARRIER wages who were in a CONCESSIONARY and BANKRUPTCY environment, at the time. The Legacies have since begun to dig themselves out of the bankruptcy-era, but many other carriers, including Frontier, are still working on it.
This is not a concessionary or bankruptcy environment. We should not be modeling our wages on bankruptcy-era wages of more than a decade ago, which is exactly what we would be doing if we achieved nothing better than (what our management considers) our "peers", who, themselves, are trying to dig themselves out of bankruptcy-era wages.
The company, like all the others, will follow supply vs. demand rules for the most part. If there is an ample supply of people willing to work for these or a slightly higher wage, then they will not change or chance only a little. I doubt there is a pilot working here that will voluntarily pay a higher wage to a worker (say a housekeeper or somebody repairing their roof) than they need to. If you could find someone to do an adequate job for you for $0.05 cheaper, then most of us would. And, Ive found this pilot group does more than an adequate job - in fact, it boggles my mind how people do extra.
The only thing that is going to bring about serious consideration for any raise is self-help. With the RLA, this is the last step and in some cases, isn't even allowed. But, for us and our small size, I think it will be.
So, hopefully, the union will negotiate in good faith with the company, contunue the dog and pony show and show the mediator that we are doing our part. And, hopefully, the mediator will get us released and we can strike. The company will lose millions and be forced to come to the table. And then, our union can present industry leading wages and work rules and we get something more to our liking.
I don't see anything else helping us. This is what it's going to take. All this other nonsense about lanyards and info strikes (while important for us as a group as well as public perception) mean very little to the company.
So, I will participate in anything and everything my union suggests to the max extent but don't have a hope of any of that having any bearing on the company whatsoever. I will do my job to the letter of the contract and that's it. I will file grievances if needed and I will not answer any company calls. I will pick up open time only if it serves my own personal purpose (which is usually a trade for a higher credit or a trip in different days). But most importantly, I will sit back and wait for the strike time to occur and not bicker about other people actions and opinions regardless of how silly they may be to me. I truly believe the majority of people here all agree with me about our wages, etc and will vote accordingly.
And I think if you're an F9 pilot, you should too.