Originally Posted by
Nevets
Skywest has been thee most successful regional with the best balance sheet and future. What is wrong with the pilots feeling they deserve just a little bit more?
Absolutely nothing! You have to look at it like this though - what's better - to be the highest paid with no future (a la ExpressJet) or the lowest paid and growing wildly (a la Colgan). There is a fine line obviously. But I think people put too much emphasis on pay alone. You don't want to burden your company with high pay rates that make you uncompetitive IMO. On the same token you don't want to work as *****s so the upper management takes your money for themselves.
If ALPA was a true union there would be one contract for all ALPA carriers regardless of company. Then we wouldn't have much to worry about in terms of undercutting.
As a SkyWest pilot you have never been on the other side of the fence where a company underbids you (unless you count the small amount of Colgan flying down in Texas and a few EAS routes from Mesa).
So its okay for pilots to get paid the same as a mid level manager but not okay for the upper management to get paid what they get paid. Skywest upper management obviously knows what they are doing. Instead of bringing people down, maybe some need to focus on pulling people up. Sorry, I'm just not a fan of class envy.
I'm not really sure what you are saying here. In regards to class envy, that's one thing (ie poor wanting the rich to pay all the taxes, I am against that) but when CEO's and BODs vote in huge pay increases and stock options for themselves that just is not right. I read an article that was discussing the differences in pay packages from CEOs here in the US and abroad. The funny thing was the foreign companies (such as Toyota) paid their CEO's significantly less multiples of the average employee salary than the unprofitable and bankrupt companies here. Reference past US Air CEOs, UAL CEOs, NWA CEOs in our industry. That's what I was referring to. It just isn't right IMO. I just don't think people are worth millions upon millions for running companies into the ground. If an average worker were to do that they'd get their butt fired with NO PAY. It's a corrupt system but there really isn't any way to change it.