Originally Posted by
CrimsonEclipse
I've heard of "dreams", "passions", which really translate to cheap pilots.
Perhaps not so much as puppy-mill pilots with mountains of debt and the expectation of riches down the road "if they just work hard."
Or perhaps both types are allowing themselves to be screwed over for slave wages and a job with decreasing responsibility, increasing automation, surveillance, hassle and strife.
As long as pilots are at each others' throats, management will continue screwing them all.
Doing a great job so far*.
I've also seen "pilot shortages" 3 times in my career. Each time I read that the conditions would get better etc, etc. There is a stack of resumes on each desk 12" thick that need to be address and a few mergers and bankruptcies to be completed before any real hiring starts.
I do not believe in an 'upcoming pilot shortage'. I don't believe in past pilot shortages. I believe in, as I said before, risk management determining that cheaper, less experienced labor with increasing levels of automation results in acceptable increases in profit/risk ratio.
In the news, the general public always hears about 'greedy pilots' who want 'more money', but they never hear about long commutes, duty days, reduced rest... and as long as pilots are fighting to keep their heads above water by stepping on the shoulders of those beneath them, they're doomed, as a group. This is where the unions could have helped...but entirely failed.
Did you read what the general public had to say about the spirit strike? The management's spin was predictable but effective; union response to management was an 'also ran'.
This isn't a corporate america problem--It's a public america problem. This is an example of the 'unrestricted free market solves all the world's problems' sort of viewpoint in action, there being no such thing as an unrestricted market. If airline management could hire H1Bs, you bet they would, instantly. If they could institute indentured servitude, like China's factories, you'd see it happen instantaneously.
The only way to fix it, in my view, is through serious long-term strategizing... of a sort of which the pilot unions seem incapable. The public must be engaged. More than superficially. The fickle mob must be directed to your side. These are people who feel sorry for, and freely give money to, celebrities who have bad things happen to them. These are the people who step over homeless in the street. These are the people who, sometimes, do both in the same day--and these are the people you need on your side, if you want to ever restore aviation as a career to any sort of prominence.
Management won't ever listen to you unless forced. Why would they? They appear, from this outsider's perspective, to be insulated from any sort of immediate repercussion by A> The provisions of the RLA, B> pilots' need to put food on the table, their loyalty to their company, and their fear of gaining a negative reputation, C> Their insulation from economic failure of the company with gratuitous severance packages and the willingness of corporations to hire failed executives on a whim, and finally D> the general public's antipathy towards those who, in perceived hard economic times, evince any sense of entitlement, or who are perceived to already be well off.
But by all means, pay for your type rides for the sniff of an interview, just like your friend's-mother's-neighbor's-accountant's-pool boy did just last week. Now he's making $215,000 year on a 747 with 1 week on 4 weeks off.
Why do you think there's a 12" stack of resumes on the desk of any hiring manager in aviation?
I do my level best to support you, my friends; I write about, talk with anyone who will listen about, and try my best to get the word out about airline pilot pay, to try and improve public perception. Invariably, when I tell people about pilot pay, the response is shock. Sometimes they respond about their neighbor/friend/landlord who is a united CA making $1,000,000,000/year, and all I can do is disabuse them of the notion that that's common.
The key is that you have to get the message out... otherwise, in the mind of the public whose support you need you will remain 'greedy pilots', who make $60/hr ($125k/year, right?), work four days a month in a jetson-esque cockpit, and are always trying to get more money.
Oh, and I.T. has a truck load of "work from home" (remote) jobs. I don't even need pants!
CE
I did once go down to an internet datacenter in San Jose wearing nothing but my pajamas and a flannel robe, and I do work from home more often than not... just like the aforementioned United CA. I've paid my dues in computers... unfortunately, the current aviation industry seems to be all dues.
Working on his CFI,
~Fox
* - I don't mean to offer offense; there's a line from an old song: "When the poor hunt the poor across mountain and moor, the rich man can keep them in chains." It's pertinent.