Originally Posted by
bull
Just curious…what is your justification for the same pay for a 350/777 carrying 300+ people around the World vs a 737 carrying 180 people around the US? Traditionally, more expensive aircraft, generating more revenue, carrying more people, operating in more challenging environments (language, rules, etc), tend to pay more. I’m genuinely interested and not trying to start anything…full disclosure I don’t work for SWA and would love to see you all get $400/hour. I’m just trying to figure how that is in the ZOR with Delta’s latest AIP
The primary “justification” for demanding what may be viewed as “greedy” pay rates or “greedy” anything else is whether or not the SWA pilot employment market will support it.
Is SWA willing to pay X for its pilots? Is SWA willing to pay Y for its fuel? If the price of fuel increases by 55% does SWA stop paying for it? At what percentage price increase does SWA stop paying for fuel or stop buying as much fuel?
What happens to SWA’s operation if it becomes unwilling to pay the market price for fuel? What happens to SWA’s operation if it becomes unwilling to pay the market price for pilots?
SWA pilots could resolve to not agree to 12-year captain pay rates less than, for example, $600 per TFP. How would SWA respond to that?
Would they decide to try to simply drag mediation out for years at SWA’s currently uncompetitive (and becoming more so) compensation structure? What happens to pilot morale and pilot hiring and retention as that progresses? When does that begin to have a material impact on SWA’s operation?
What would happen to SWA’s operation after an impasse is finally declared in our dispute if management continued to refuse to agree to our contractual demands? Would passengers begin booking away from SWA during the cooling off period? If SWA refused to accede to our demands prior to the expiration of the status quo period, how confident are SWA’s managers that SWA would be be able to survive a legal strike?
Would SWA have begun trying to train scabs in anticipation of an impasse being declared? Would SWA be able to find enough scabs when airline pilot jobs are readily available and when other airlines pay substantially more than SWA and the scabs would then forever after have to deal with the scab moniker hung around their necks?
All of the above are factors in determining whether or not the SWA pilot hiring market will support “greedy” pay rates and a “greedy” overall total contractual value.
But, let’s be honest, the single most critical factor and the likely point of failure is whether or not pilots would have the resolve to stick to their guns and not capitulate out of fear, uncertainty, and doubt to a contractual value less than what the market will support before the process plays out.