Originally Posted by
forgot to bid
FRONTLINE: flying cheap: interviews: gordon bethune | PBS
Really? You think $16,000 a year as a starting salary for a first officer is enough?
Can I tell you how they get to that, just so that the public knows? Every three or four years, there's contract negotiations between labor groups and the company.
The company says: "We can afford to pay this much money. This is total dollars. How would you like to allocate it?"
Well, you only get so much money. How much would you like to allocate? Would you like to have every pilot get $2 less than ours so we could pay the first-year people this much, or would you rather have the $2 an hour in your paycheck and let the first-year people go probationary as they are, like every other, and you were? And that's what they elect to do. ...
The big sticking points in contract negotiations. I never believe the total dollat amount available for pilot compensation. Management would NOT be doing their job if they paid us every single dollar possible in their budget. This part of his argument is a crock of ****.
Originally Posted by
acl65pilot
There is good and bad to this type of negotiation. Positive is you know the value of the contract up front, the negative is you can be killed by a thousand paper cuts.
It is IBB style where the total value is determined but we get killed on the costing of each item. I would be careful about what you wish for. The corporation love this style because the work takes place on the other side of the table and they can then just argue that the cost assigned to each item it not correct.
Death by a thousand cuts could also be called Death by a thousand arguments. Agree with ACL on this one. There are a few items where it works in favor of the pilots, but imo those items are rare.