SkyHigh

How can an employer "artificially" reduce wages? At some point pilots would stop showing up for work. It seems impossible to me to impose an artificially low wage. Pilots are not forced to work there. The legacy carriers have seen their wages nearly cut in half and there wasn't a mass exodus. I bet in a few years they could be cut in half again and people would still stay.

If anything wages are still too high. Skybus paid their pilots punishingly low wages and yet they were able to fill every ground school class with experienced pilots. There is your true bottom.

Skyhigh

TheDashRocks

[quote=RJSAviator76;621145]You totally missed the point. "Higher paid, senior pilots" concept wouldn't exist. A captain would be paid what the market for a captain on that airplane would bear and what he could negotiate himself.


Manager: "Good morning. I welcome you five captains to your annual salary negotiation and contract renewal ceremony. Will each of you please write your name and requested hourly rate of pay on the form in front of you. As you deliberate on what figure to write down, please keep in mind that I have at least five FO's that are willing to upgrade to captain for $43.00 per hour."

"Now, please pass your forms up. I remind you that it is a violation of company policy for you to discuss your current pay or your proposed pay with any other employees of the company. Violators will be fired. Please send in the next five pilots."

dlbpilot

Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!

RJSAviator76

Dash, clearly you are an airline-abused puppy. Don't forget the cost of upgrading those FOs and the cost of hiring their replacements just to save $1/hour or so doesn't make any financial sense.

1900luxuryliner

By being in almost complete control of the supply/demand curve. The way the supply/demand curve is supposed to work, the producer (labor) should have a certain amount of control over supply. Pilots are the producers, but have almost zero control over the supply of their product. Management will always push/ lobby for legal and other initiatives that keep the supply of available labor as high as possible. Age 65, MPL licensing, 250 hour minimum requirements, agreements with pilot factories, etc., etc., etc. Just look at the initiatives Roger Cohen is consistently pushing for. A lot of what his organization supports and lobbies for has a direct affect on keeping the supply of available pilots high. A quote I've heard him repeatedly puke out is,"Military pilots are landing jets on aircraft carriers at 200 hours, so why would a properly trained 250 hour regional pilot be a problem?" His fallacious thinking fails to take into account that the military washes out people who should not be there. The civilian world takes on anyone with enough money, and a pulse. What lobby or organization do we have? ALPA and Teamsters, theoretically.....although consistently proving to be more and more ineffective by the day. Management will always be pushing for a way to manipulate the curve to their advantage. I think pilots would show up to fly for free, and would just excuse it as a time building experience in order to fly for an airline that actually pays a wage. The question remains. How can we control the supply of our product, thereby balancing our relationship to management in the supply and demand curve? Pushing for increased experience requirements would be a good start (ATP mins). There is no reason the FAA should be opposed to increased experience requirements. The only reason they might have an issue is that the relationship between the FAA and airline management can a bit questionable, at times. I fully understand that what I just wrote is not new, and may even sound like a broken record, but I still talk to FOs everyday who don't have a clue about this stuff. They are just happy to be there, no matter how abused they are. Abolishing unionism is definitely not the answer, especially when the supply and demand relationship between pilots and management is totally unfair and unbalanced. The small shred of unionism we have left is the only thing that is holding this career path together.....barely. You can't have market forces take affect when only one side of the supply and demand relationship has the power. It would be like a car buyer demanding that a car company pumps out way more cars than the market can bear, just so they are able to purchase the car at a decreased price. Car companies are the ones who control the output of their product, as it should be with pilots.

Pielut

Pilots do not produce. Pilots are labor, move this aircraft from point A to point B without killing anyone. There is no product the pilot produces, management creates and sells the product. Last time I checked management does not consult with the pilot group on how to market/sell/grow the product. There is no way to control the supply of pilots, management will not put themselves in the situation where they have to pay more for a pilot. You have to remember "MANAGEMENT DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE HAPPY WITH YOUR PAY!!!!(there are 50 more pilots who will gladly take your job for less) NEITHER DOES THE GOVERNMENT!! How many times do we need to go around and around with this?? When was the last time the union made it any better, pay has been dropping out of the sky for the last 8 years.

1900luxuryliner

I'm using terms that apply to market forces and a supply/demand relationship. When looking at it in those terms, pilot labor is sold at a price to a buyer, which is management. Those terms have been used to describe the market affects on wages for decades. I'm not pulling it out of my butt. You may want to tone it down on the arrogance, and do a basic Google search, such as "Market forces on Wages", or "Labor Market", or "Labor Economics". This isn't new information. The reason we're going around and around on it, is because people like you have a lack of basic understanding on the forces at work when your wages are determined....

bryris

The price is cheap and its getting cheaper. Go find the JetBlue vs. Republic E-190 payscale thread. Yet, those RAH guys are salivating over the opportunity. Same airplane, same basic routes, same number of deaths upon impact with the surface.

Pielut

Moving on past juvenile comments.... Anyway you are confusing a simple fact, you are pilot not a doctor, lawyer, or apparently an economist (I am impressed, no, really). This is not hard to understand, there are more pilots than jobs, so higher wages are not required. There is an over supply of labor. Was that simple enough or are more big words required to impress you? Controlling the supply of pilots will never happen. Pilot wages are not going up any time soon, so you might want to just get over it and have a coke and a smile.

1900luxuryliner

What simple fact am I missing? Market forces play a role on all wages. It doesn't matter if I'm a pilot, lawyer, stripper, prostitute, etc. I was trying to lay it out in the most simple terms possible, because I see people misunderstanding market forces on labor time and time again. Multiple times in this thread, and hundreds of times on this site. Your comments are absolutely not constructive in any way, shape, or form. You are saying that we are all screwed, and there is nothing we can do. What good does resignation do? Explain that to me. Not doing anything and giving up is the worst thing anyone can do. Controlling supply could be as simple as raising experience requirements. Because of the widespread resignation, though, it is questionable whether there will be any headway in this area. That doesn't stop me from trying to make things better, though. I don't agree with "If I don't like it, I can just quit". I go more along with "If I don't like it, try to change it."