Originally Posted by
Superpilot92
I disagree, that doesnt have much to do with the argument. All airlines, regional and mainline have lower first year pay unfortunately regardless of the planes. Even UPS and FedEx have lower first year pay scales. I think we can all agree first year pay should be low at any airline just because you are "new".
Would you accept a position flying for a mainline carrier if it meant 30k first year? Would you prefer all flying be at the mainline level if it meant All of our longevity's started at an earlier point? If all flying was at the mainline level NONE of us would have to take big pay cuts to "improve" our careers as we would have started our Career longevity once we started at the bottom. Just a thought.
Well, I for one, do not at all agree with your statement that first year pay should be low because you're "new". It is fair enough that it is "lower", but it shouldn't be poverty level low (ala NWA, or any regional) because we are all professionals, and should not need food stamps just to afford our jobs. First year pay is not low because a pilot is "new". First year pay is low because enough pilots think it should be low (no one like a pilot to throw another under the bus), and by the time a guy has a voice to do something about it, the first year is over for him, and said guy then merely thinks: "well, I had to live through it, and it won't help me to fix it now".
This is the kind of thinking which is killing our profession. For the record, I'm probably just as guilty of it as the next guy.
I am a supporter of ALPA, but I believe that allowing sh!tty first year pay is one of the big failings of ALPA. I know that there is an effort to come up with basic minimal contract standards, and I pray that cr@p@ss first year pay will be one of the problems fixed. If we believe that first year pilots are so worthless, on what basis can we claim that all of a sudden second year, or third year, or tenth year pilots are valuable professionals who must be treated with respect?
It is to our absolute detriment to devalue any subset of professional airline pilots. NO 121 pilot (or any other intensively paid professional) should have to get food assistance to feed his or her family.