Originally Posted by
T8348
After seeing so many negative comments, first of all I respect all of these opinions, however they are all subjective and only applies to individual circumstances. In this case I’ll throw in some of my subjective opinions that suits my own circumstances which I believe will cover a lot of pilots at VA especially poor FOs.
That is great someone can afford take pay cut and grab extra DDOs, it’s good on you that have achieved financial freedom, but for most of us we still have years of mortgage to pay, rent, child support you name it. So for myself I can’t afford go PIA. And you have to look it from a business point of view, no company will just increase money especially the amount they are offering without gaining anything back, it’s against any business principle hence will not go anywhere. 11/12 days off is already a very luxury deal no one else in Australia have, yet this current 12/13 DDOs arrangement has always been a temporary measure induced by COVID. From both AFAP and company’s recent communication I can see the management is trying to boost the pay by some creative way while not breaking the mandates from their boss, I’m not some kind of company man, I’m just stating my observation, it looks their intentions are good which union representatives have the same view. If you look at the offer as a whole it’s really a win for us. And you can’t use some extreme examples from the US to demand some massive increase of pay in here, it won’t work, better just go to the US, simple. Just look at the comparison email/posts union sent to us, from a factual standpoint, you will find it’s a fair deal, not perfect but fair. If we vote it down and it goes to fair work I don’t think they will do us any favour. I totally support network guys doing their PIA because their deal is extremely poor, if I was there I’d do the same thing. But if ours goes to fair work they will just laugh at us. At the end of the day you also have to think about the company, will VA remain competitive to survive so we can still have a stable aviation career or we just make it bottom up and go stack the shelves in Coles or Woolworths? QF’s got all the favouritism from the government so no matter how bad their services are they get to survive, we don’t have that luxury. So look at the big picture also. If the extra DDOs are important to you then you can always strategically go sick without pay because you have achieved financial freedom, don’t you? Otherwise with this offer we have the potential to make some good money, and most importantly the base pay will form a solid foundation so you don’t have to worry about your liabilities when the month is quite there’s not many drafts available.
In a perfect world I’d want a million dollars a year, plus only having to go to work when I want to blah blah blah, but this is reality, after being through COVID worked various jobs outside aviation, I’ve seen much worse ways the management treats their people while the workers getting peanuts. I understand we’ve invested a lot to get to this point but nothing has been guaranteed, and still will not be, so don’t take it as granted that you deserve better, you probably just don’t realise how good you have because you haven’t seen worse.
Just my 2 cents.