CA Tony,

I too love that quote but he was actually referring to Slavery, not quite the same thing as Unionized labor. Either way, great quote!

 

It isn't a far stretch to compare slavery to what regional pilots do today. Even our union treats us like 3/4 of a person the way the EVP system is set up.

 

And to be clear, I don't expect any increase above inflation.

But it is a failure of management (verb) to be asking for concessions. It is the easy course of action for the good-for-nothing MBA types so full of "management theory" that are taking over American industry. Get a short-term cost savings today (to boost earnings or stock price or whatever) while actually dismantling the operation over the long term.

Each of us can cost or save the company more in ONE DAY of normal ops than any ANNUAL change in compensation that might be negotiated. And that is not doing anything unusual or out of the ordinary, just all the little things that are discretionary within SOP or not covered by SOP. No being "extra safe", nothing unusual - just day to day stuff that depends on our personal level of "give a $#!7". But none of those effects will show up on a spreadsheet.

The message from Management (noun), from Mainline management and to some extent from mainline members of our own union: you are not valued.

Read it again:
"Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed."

Management can be productive, can nurture strength, can make an operation better. More often, it is parasitic. Sometimes a symbiotic parasite, but ....

 

Except that none of our management [noun] have an MBA or really any formal business training. But they do read the trendy management paperbacks, the RAA talking points, and follow the crowd.

It's going to come to a point very soon that between mainline telling us we're worthless subcontractors, and regional management telling we don't even deserve the measly compensation we currently have, everyone's "give a $#%" reserve you describe is going to deplete, and management will get what they have coming to them. But only then will they learn.

 

I believe that their salary for a regional airline is out of standard. ANA CEO makes an equivalent of $600,000 a year. A major airline. I believe this is a fair market value of his skills and assets to his company.

But for a regional airline, making over 1 million a year is insane. Its not that he needs a bigger house, or boat. Its that they WANT it. Taking a bigger payout, when your company NEEDS those funds to supply ample MX and staffing is selfish. Have you seen some of the paintjobs, its embarrassing if one of the passengers were to look from the outside at it. That is why we are at the bottom of the performance list.

 

That's a different argument, and may be valid. The only thing I am pointing out is that the entire story was not told and the results had been spun to argue an inaccurate point. I also know why there is a big disparity between management pay and labor pay. We are labor. Generally speaking, we park the airplane and go home. When I had 20+ people working for me and made 3x what I make here, I never got away from my job. I can only imagine the lack of any real type of private life BH has because of the thousands of people and millions of dollars he is responsible for. Again, not arguing for or against. I'm just pointing out that the whole story is quite different.

 

No, he was advocating capitalism (I think).

In actuality, labor comes after capital, although independent of it, an hopefully results in profit for the capitalist. When I started my first business, I took money I had saved (capital) from earnings from my job and invested it in tools to perform the functions of my business. While I initially did all the work, I eventually hired labor to use the tools to perform the tasks that I required because of the work I had secured. On some projects, we made money (profit), and on some we did not (losses). Regardless, my intention for opening the business was to make money for myself, not provide jobs for people. Those jobs were necessary to perform the tasks, but were only necessary as long as I made money off of those workers performing those jobs. We are labor. If you want to be paid like management, go in to management, but until someone has actually walked in those shoes, that someone doesn't really have an accurate point of view from which to judge.

Again, I am not advocating concessions.

 

Yes it is. We can quit any time we want to.

 

I understand the responsibilities of management and how at certain times, the work will be ongoing. I am not arguing that he shouldn't make that much since that is not my decision to make. My only problem is that the same person is asking for concessions.

This is not to boast but to show an example. At my previous position in management, I was in charge of 3 different departments for the hospital at the same time. I can count on my fingers how many times in a year I had been called at home or had to put in more time. One year the hospital administration gave us a bonus but we were unable to get raises for our employees. The outcome of that was we used the money from the bonus to get something for our employees.

Can it be done? Yes it can. It just boils down to how much management cares about labor.

 

If you had not hired labor to perform those tasks, you would not have been able to complete the work that you secured. End result being, regardless of your investment you wouldn't have been able to make a profit or worse yet would've had to close shop.