Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
You can't compare any industry to medicine that is unique in that Doctors and other associated professions will always be in demand. The other issue there is that Doctors themselves control the labour market for doctors and have significant influence politically. Doctors will always be overpaid as they control their own salary and labour supply not the market.
As for every other job it is dependent on the market for your services. It doesn't matter how good you are at anything if noone wants to buy it that's the way it is. Imagine being the best manufacturer of radial engine, pocket calculators, the world's best publisher of annual reports. Just because you make the best product or are good at something doesn't mean that you will be employed. Why is it that if you win one golf tournament on the PGA you get circa US$1 000 000 while the World's Croquet Championship is amateur?
Don't think that every white collar profession is a guarantee to print money either. There are plenty of very good engineers out there who are discovering that there are engineers just as good as them from Bangladesh or India who will work for a salary that wouldn't even paid rent in Australia. Journalism careers got blown up by the internet. Good luck finding a long term career in news reporting. Laywers too are getting squeezed. Every Uni in Australia pumps out law graduates every year which only diminishes your chance of a payrise.
So at the end of the day Pilots will have to accept it isn't personal and have to go find another way of being employed. The issue here is that Pilot skills are not readily recognised by employers and don't have qualifications that cross over into other industries unlike just about every other qualification.
Pilots aren’t like Doctors for the simple reason that you cant hang out your shingle and start practicing.
But a Surgeon mate of mine , who also flies , says he feels the same way when doesn’t fly for a while as when he doesn’t operate for a couple of weeks. If people think Pilots are glorified bus drivers , well good luck. But I’ll take experience , training and recency thanks very much.
The first couple of years after ‘89 were a debacle and the Australian industry was very lucky to get away with it. We don’t need a repeat.