Originally Posted by
midnight cruiser
That Marxist nonsense contradicts basic economic theory.
Restrict the movement of labour and it's price (pay) goes down. Conversely, if pilots can freely come and go, pay and working conditions have to be market leading, or their planes will suddenly be sitting grounded. Pilots can huff and puff, but ultimately they have very little influence over pay, especially if the employer knows they won't leave. [Hint - how much better did Ryanair get, after introducing a seniority list? - answers on a postcard]!!
As for DEC, it seems pretty rare in the west, and the cases I know of have only involved companies adding lots of planes in a hurry, so the"slot" is essentially a new one. Rapid expansion also creates training capacity limitations, limiting ability to purely do upgrades, and also train the FO replacement. Then there's also the situation when there are no upgradable FOs left.
For the employer, the flip side of being able to pay less to their current pilots trapped by seniority, is that to attract experienced new recruits, they would have to pay more, to offset the extreme unattractiveness of being at the bottom of a seniority list.
Pretty much every airline in the US is union and seniority. Pretty much all of the Legacies in the EU are too. And all of those pay better than the likes of Ryan/Easy nevermind Wizz. I work for the US equivalent of Ryan, have 15 days off a month, and make $300K +15% retirement. Doesn't sound very Marxist to me.