Ouch for us...good on SWAPA.

Carl

 

Wikipedia has a great high school history level discussion of it.

Executive version: 130 years ago the railway unions shut down the country by going on strike and it was ended only with federal troops. Congress got ****ed. The law has been tweaked and morphed from there into it's current over-reaching management hammer.

 

You raise an interesting issue... are airline pilots "blue" or "white collar" workers. If you work for Jet Blue, I suppose the answer is more obvious!

We are wage earners and operate machinery. That sounds like a "Blue Collar" worker. But do we conduct manual labor? Not really? Quite a few airlines still require applicants to hold a college degree... that sounds more like a "White Collar" requirement.

 

It really doesn't matter what color your collar is, we work in a very heavily regulated industry, inspite of "Deregulation". We are governed by rules set forth by both the FAA and the RLA, just for starters.

We are paid an "hourly wage", in my little mind, that makes us more Blue Collar than white. We do however require a license to practice, just like a Doctor or Lawyer, there is no such license to be a White Collar Airline CEO or corrupt politician, although most of them are lawyers...

Throw another Weiner on the Barbi will you? These are the jackasses who write our laws!

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Lifes...2&imageindex=1

 

Joe, that depends on how many ex-wives and current girlfriends he's supporting

 

Market...higher when scarce, lower when not.

 

Well you guys need to get yourselves ten or twenty thousand RJ pilots -- that'll clean those numbers right up.

PIPE

 

Problem is that 90% of "airline pilots" are uptight, white republicans living a blue collar labor existance.....wear a uniform and a name tag....you are blue collar....period..embrace it... go out and ply your craft and quit being closet ceo's....college degrees in the last 18 years are nothing more than the high school of your predecessors

 

Blue-collar worker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who typically performs manual labor and earns an hourly wage. Blue-collar workers are distinguished from those in the service sector and from white-collar workers, whose jobs are not considered manual labor.

Blue-collar work may be skilled or unskilled, and may involve manufacturing, mining, building and construction trades, mechanical work, maintenance, repair and operations maintenance or technical installations. The white-collar worker, by contrast, performs non-manual labor often in an office; and the service industry worker performs labor involving customer interaction, entertainment, retail and outside sales, and the like.

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I think most pilots' collars are white (unless you work for JetBlue). I think the distinction here is a non-manual labor workforce that is typically highly educated (at the majors at least). We're probably more like service-sector employees than anything else.

Oh, and I wore a flight suit for 20 years in the military, so I was a green-collar worker, except when I worked in a staff job in an office in my Air Force Blues where I was, of course, blue-collar.

 

Okay okay. Maybe using blue-collar/white-collar wasn't the best descriptor. I should have said the politicians are going to look out for the so called less privileged.

The image of a pilot is a sharp dressed dude flying off to glamorous places while getting plenty of tail. No politician is going to feel sorry for a pilot and back them. Just reality folks.

It takes someone about 12 years to become a doctor. Plus it costs at least $200,000 to go to medical school and it will take them years to pay off their student loans.