Originally Posted by
Lucifer
The entire employee cost is looked at, not simply the wage per hour. They look at everything from the on-boarding costs which includes the recruiting staff, the interview hotels, medical tests, transportation; then new hire on-boarding, ground school, hotels, transportation, simulator time, the instructors time, the administrative staff time; then paying the company share of all benefits, providing paid vacation time, and paid sick time.
It is much cheaper to pay an OT premium, even at 100% than to hire an extra employee that costs all the extra training, benefits and vacations. That holds true right up until the point that it becomes cheaper to pay all the misc costs to get the lower hourly rate. When that happens is something only they know.
You can't advocate NOT picking up OT, but you certainly shouldn't be encouraging it. The flip side is, if your pilots are already doing the right thing and the company has quietly threatened the union for a job action due to a large drop in OT pickup, then making that post would be a smart move.
This is for any airline, not just yours.
this guy gets it. Saying the extra cost hits them where it hurts is laughable. Good explanation above. Some will say, they’ll just junior man us anyway and the flights won’t cancel. Exactly, yes they will, but then they are short on people AND it costs a ton to pay the ones picking up the open flying involuntary. Huge difference. Key question is where is the break even point, only the company knows, maybe roughly at least.
Any means to justify picking up open does not really sit well with me. I kinda sorta get the part picking up to get back to min guarantee, but those we let go has a min guarantee of zero. If you need time off for family events etc, just take the hit and let a reserve fly and deal with 60-65 hours or whatever. Nothing says we have to make 72 hours every month.
Everyone is learning during these times, pilots, union, and even the company to certain extent.
These are all opinions, not direction.