Originally Posted by
⌐ AV8OR WANNABE
Good idea to create our own thread...
"...Someday the pilots that got the pay bump are going to figure out how much damage they did to themselves..."
757upspilot - can you please explain what you mean by that?
The way I see it the senior pilots such as yourself got the highest and frankly an unprecedented pay bump one could ever hope for - an extra 5 years of top captain pay! That’s a huge amount of extra money none of you could possibly be planning on getting since no one knew if and how the new law would be passed.
I really hope this won't turn into age 65 bashing party but I'm truly trying to understand why you think that the junior pilots "...one day [will] figure out how much damage they did to themselves..."
The way I see it, and obviously I'm very biased here, the senior pilots are the ones who literally won a multi-million dollar lottery so if anything in the next contract we should be asking for the FOs to be making maybe 70 or 80% of the captain's pay since it'll take 15 years plus to upgrade and some will never even make it to the left seat. I’m sure I’ll get slammed for saying that but I’m just expressing my honest opinion here and from talking to my friends I know I’m not alone to be thinking that way.
In my view due to the December 13th 2007 legislature, which was driven primarily by senior (or more accurately older) pilots at many airlines, the current contract isn’t really a pro-junior but rather a pro-senior pilot contract.
I am really trying to understand your view so please do not slam me for disagreeing with you but rather give me some arguments that a junior pilot, like myself, would find reasonable. Right now I'm perplexed to hear some senior captains actually think we have a "Robin Hood" contract which takes the senior pilots' dough and redistributes it to the junior guys/gals.
Think about it - why would we, junior pilots, care about bringing up senior captain pay rate when many of us will never even get a chance to be captains? …and if we do it’ll be just for a few years…
I hope you don't think my comment is disparaging toward you or other senior pilots - I simply think that realistically we should be looking for a contract which gives us the highest overall benefits during our entire tenure with the company, not just the last few years…
I hope to see some good pro and against arguments here…
Thanks…
The top of the captain pay scale in the newest contract just barely kept pace with inflation from the 1998 contract. Run the numbers and you will agree. FO pay got boosted quite a bit, and it needed to be boosted because FO pay was a serious B scale on how it was figured under the 98 contract. The captains basically got a COLA raise in the last contract, no mas.
Our FO pay is most likely the highest percentage of captains pay in the industry. Thats good! But, we needed a real raise is captains pay as well, not just a COLA raise. That wouyld have benefited FO's as well. So what about the CUT that SO's took? I dont hear any complaints about that.
To get another thing straight, I am one of the most junior left seaters in the lower 48. I've been here 12.5 years, not 15. Many of the ANC guys have been here much less than that.
Or maybe you guys are arguing about something completely different in which case, Im all effed up.........:-)