Your comment is ridiculous. The "well I did it and survived, so suck it up" mentality is exactly why pilots are never going to figure this out. You're telling me that a Captain with 3000 hours deserves 3-4 TIMES the pay as a FO with 2000 hours?

This isn't about liberalism or Obama. This is about paying the people with similar qualifications fair wages. I'm guessing you'd also be for keeping the FO pay the same and taking 20% pay raises. Team #1, right? The rest of you can eat once a day.

I agree no one should be have their pay reduced. Everyone who plants their behind in the seat of an aircraft carrying passengers deserves and has worked hard for a reasonable wage. However, your comment about not showing up is ridiculous. It is that mentality that needs to be canned. The guys / gals sitting in the commuter planes (for you old timers) haven't been doing it for just a year or two. They have been doing it for 6,7,8 or 10 years. This is not an apprenticeship program. How about lending a hand to your community and profession instead of ****ing all over the guys working their tales off?

I'm not advocating it, just pointing out how it works.

I assume you are referring to the mentality of Delta1067

This kind of thinking is why the pilots industry and why pilots pay and quality of life are what it is today, and why union members with this mentality need to be routed out. This "I got mine, too bad for you" mentality is simply selfishness encouraged by management to keep pay low, and to boost airline profits (check out the post on Republic Airlines profits in the forums today. You know, Republic, the airline that can't afford to pay its pilots).

It's greed pure and simple.

As the airline profits, it gives management justification to pay themselves bonuses while our guys starve.Yet no one ever brings up the salaries of the various management positions in the airlines, or more importantly, the assistant managers, and their various bonus and stock schemes that they receive as first and second year employees. Why doesn't ALPA cast a light on this for comparisons?

WHY the unions allow this b.s. of low first years pay to continue is beyond me. This has no place in modern aviation and the airlines can CLEARLY afford to pay people. What other industry has you starving at years one and two while you are on a one year probation? Only pilots can pressure their unions into stopping this whipsawing of pilots.

If enough pilots understood the high probability of their current airline furloughing them, and that they will have to start at another carrier at year 1 f/o with the poor wages, then maybe this kind of thinking would be replaced by taking action in pushing for changes....

Think it can't happen, take a look at the new Envoy! What do you think Envoy is going to do with all those surplus pilots? Get ready for year 1 again at your new operation, and for this cycle to repeat to infinity until labor takes a stand.

Your comment doesn't make any sense...

At your adopted airline, taking a 12 year CA and comparing with a 12 year FO on the 717, shows FO pays 68.4% of CA pay. This 68% holds true across that airframe all the way to 777 pay at 12 year.

At Air Wisconsin, the year 16 pay for an FO is 47.4% of CA pay.

If ALPA would adopt a 68% policy, you would see year 16 FO pay at $65.96 compared to $97.00 for CA.

Or, based on ALPA stating that we have no leverage (and the fact that unions tend to be more along the lines of your "Obama" critique), the 68% values at year 16, with no increase in the pot, would be: $57 for FO, $84 for CA.

These values, while "spreading the wealth" would fall more in line with the DAL pay scales with the consideration of a smaller pot to divvy out.

I assume you will be leading the charge to decertify ALPA and utilize a direct relationship with DAL management, since you are against "Obama style liberalism" (which you support by being an ALPA member). Of course, if you are a non-member paying a contract MX fee, I commend you for following your views in your actions.

Yes it holds true if you are a maxed out FO but you are comparing apples to oranges. I'm at 5th year pay and just now am making 60% Captain pay. Year 1 @ Delta I only made 31% Capt pay and year 20 was 56% Capt pay. I guess I should be *****izing because I'm not making 68% Capt pay, what an outrage!!!!

How would that work out for your employer if regional FOs stopped showing up for work and no mainline flights had any passengers? What do you think would happen to your pay? And Delta quarterly reports? And employee bonuses? I'm thinking you wouldn't like the results.

I don't think anyone here is saying that 60k would be an acceptable wage for the right seat of an RJ or Dash.

What we need to NOT do, is shoot for a nationwide average. I found this interesting article recently...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/up...hest.html?_r=1


Pay particular attention to the little table with percentages of income change since 2000. In the US, it's 0.3%. So on average, the middle class of this country has received a 0.3% increase in pay since 2000. Also since 2000, the value of the dollar is about 73% of what it was. So most of us have taken roughly a 27% hit to our buying power.

Don't shoot for a stagnated nationwide average, shoot for pay increases that match or outpace inflation.



As to the last few posts.... Reducing the pay of anyone is not an acceptable answer. If you want your FO's to make more money, find out why the gap between the two pay scales is so large. I know at least a few of the contributing factors... If your company is like mine, pay changes are usually negotiated at percentages. So if you get a 3% raise, a captain making 100 bucks gets an extra 3, while the FO making 40 bucks gets an extra... 1 dollar and 20 cents. For anyone but the maxed-out Captains, it's a bad idea to negotiate that way. Rather, we should be negotiating dollar amount increases. Every part of the payscale gets increased by $2. If the company wants percentages, do the math on what 3% would come out to if you applied it as an equal dollar amount to each step of the scale. Everyone still gets a raise, and it's actually applied fairly. There's no reason for the company to balk at this type of increase, as long as the percentages of the total are within their budget. This wouldn't bring the scales closer together, in dollar amounts, but it would if you calculate as percentages. It just depends on how you want to do the math. At least with a system like this, the gulf wouldn't be always getting larger.

This is what we need to be after our unions about.... be better at negotiating.