Originally Posted by
ericferret
I would suggest that corporal is the equivalent of a licensed engineer. That is someone who signs for his own work and that of others. In commercial aviation airline/offshore helicopters that would probably bring in £60 plus.
Apprentices were being paid £25k 15 years ago with a further pay rise when they went to mechanic.!!!!!
Another issue is rate of time to promotion.
Cannot speak for whay happens today but at one time promotion to corporal in the air force was slow and to sergeant was dead mans shoes.
Army promotion was about 2 years to corporal and another 3 to sergeant.
Hence at one point quite a few RAF corporals transferred to the army. Couple of courses and promoted sergeant.
Working for a UK major airline I was on about £52k 18 years ago.
Just a small point re the underlined above. When the RAF had 22 trade groups, this was indeed the case for non technical trades, although as an aside, why Safety Equip were classed as such was an insult, but not so for technical trades and there was a pay disparity between both groups.
The RAF however have never had a satisfactory promotion chain / progression for airmen. The so called "time promotion" produced a surplus of C/T's for example, so the answer from " manning " , or zimmer frame central, was to insist on assessments being raised to unheard of numbers and "Spec Reps ". even then it was the luck of the draw. Not forgetting the RAF had an obsession for many years with "single trades"....A & C being the normal in civilian life of course.
The pay issue became prominent at the end of the 70's / early 80's when " manning " woke up one day and realised there was an excessive amount of PVR's being submitted.
There has always been a disparity between civil military maintenance providers, from the past Airworks being the most obvious, but who made up the difference with enhancements for things like towing or keys. Clearly, that disparity mindset remains if they are reluctant to pay the going rate(s) for LAE's.
The current RAF apprenticeship bears no resemblance to the past. The basic AMM course provides enough training to ensure
they are safe when they become productive....the SAC(Tech) course does go into
slightly more depth, but nowhere near the levels many on here would have experienced. As for promotion to Cpl, possible, but again, much depends on how involved they become with secondary / tertiary duties.
The military will never rival civilian pay scales, but, will continue with the "30 days leave / accom / dental and medical treatment / adventure training" to try and compensate as an attraction to joining.