TACHO just keeps beating down the seniority arguments with rational counterpoints, great stuff!
I wonder how many of the pro-seniority pilots here have worked another career outside of aviation. The security from knowing one can walk to another company in the same grade or higher is liberating.
Company culture changed for the worse in the last ten years? Leave, and try another one. A brown-noser takes your promotion? Leave, and be promoted as part of the new deal. Bored of the routes you’ve been flying for ten years? Leave, for a welcome change to the daily routine. If you make a wrong move, you could go back to your old company, maintaining your salary.
But here’s the thing. Airlines would have to compete to retain experienced pilots, so potential issues such as the above examples might not happen as often. Maybe companies would have to prioritise employee satisfaction as much as cost-cutting. If only!
An immobile workforce is management’s wet dream. It’s a real shame that so many of us fail to see this.
A previous airline of mine once had a new recruitment manager from the real world outside of aviation. In his first few weeks, he told me how amazed he was to see such loyalty to the company. He couldn’t believe some pilots had been there for more than 20 years. I asked, had he heard of seniority. “What’s that?” he said. I explained.
“You mean, if you went to BA, you wouldn’t be a captain there? You’d have to start all over again?” he asked.
”Yep, and I’d take a 40% pay cut.” I replied.
He grinned. ”That is genius! So we have a hold over you and you can’t easily leave? We don’t need to compete so much on salaries.”
He understood straight away that the system benefits the company alone, holding down conditions.
I spent over ten years years in the seniority queue at that airline, just starting to reach decent T&Cs before it went belly up. The seniority terms to which I signed up failed to mention the company would be going bust.
To continue a similar career path with the option of a future long haul command in the UK, I was looking at a 40% pay cut to start again and perform exactly the same RHS widebody role I had been doing nearly ten years earlier.
This kind of hit to income and progression mid-career is simply unheard of in other professions. Why are so many pilots “happy” to accept this nonsense?
Seniority won’t disappear anytime soon, but it’s nice to read here that at least some of us embrace a free employment market.