Originally Posted by
Cujo665
If unions can stop wage concessions, please explain why a widebody CA makes only 65% of the purchasing power they had in 1980? Please explain why regional pilots ended up on food stamps and public assistance after 20+ years of concessionary negotiating after deregulation? Oh, and if you look at wage charts alongside new hire experience level you’ll see that as they reduced pay, working conditions and benefits, they continually were forced to hire less and less qualified applicants. They drove people away from wanting to become pilots. They created their own pilot shortage.
point being, anybody thinking a union can prevent concessions over the long term hasn’t been paying attention. They pay what they have to to keep seats filled.
You are probably comparing straight hourly wages without any consideration toward soft money generated by all the work rule changes. A widebody CA in 1980 earning 120,000 a year would need to make 420,000 a year now. That’s easily done at Delta and I suspect American and United. In fact at Delta that’s probably well below the average Widebody CA pay. It’s not difficult to crack 600,000 and some pilots have exceeded 900,000 in a year. If you compare it to 2019 when the current round of contracts got put on ice by covid we were solidly ahead of inflation.