Well I think I see the way its going to go: the fascinating post about life for Russia's pilots says it all.
There is a pool of trained pilots in Russia earning a pittance and being worked close to death, and gradually they are leaving for the likes of MOL and the like.
Whilst they will still be worked like donkeys there, they will earn, by their domestic standards, a fortune.
Enough money, once remitted back home, to never work again after a reasonable spell in the trenches at MOL-air or wherever can swing the work permit.
And the work permits WILL be forthcoming. Air travel is a "social good" which governments wish to enable the market to provide at minimum cost.
The Western pilots who leave the european industry will be replaced, and a gradual, de-facto "foreign flagging" will - (is taking!?) - take place.
Remember the shipping industry in the UK?
NOTHING will change in the FTL arena. Pilots are too easily divided by work group, (short vs longhaul, one base vs another, one sub-company in the group vs another etc etc etc), to ever mount an effective strike about ANYTHING.
Those who leave will be seen off with glee by management teams desperate to get out from under pension obligations to existing staff.
To the guy who lamented that piloys who leave BMI are never thanked by the managers: the only thanks you'll see are the ones that say:
"thanks for leaving the pension scheme early and getting us off the hook - now we can employ some starry-eyed newcomer at 30% less overall cost to us - p@@@ off and dont close the door behind you!"
Its weird. You go to work and the job still makes extraordinary demands that I still contend very few have the talent or the will to meet. The awesome responsibility for others lives, the need for judgement honed by years of experience, the aching fatigue, the constant need for vigilance and attention to very small but critical details, whilst being so tired you could drop.
And yet you are treated by your management teams at best with indifferance, more often with hostility and frequently with contempt. If you even THINK of striking the press will gleefully wheel out the old stero-types about over-paid, under-worked greedy dimwhits who dont live in the "real world", (as if the proprietors or journalists at the average UK red-top did, but thats another story!).
Forget it: plan a new future. There's a lot of small businesses out there that can provide a good living and the dignity and purpose of self-employment. It also avoids the need to prostrate oneself by stooping as low as some meglomaniac employers in the industry would have one go, seemingly just for the pleasure of being able to get away with it (who might I be thinking of as prime candidate here? Could it be the man who likes to MOL-est pilots' T's n C's !?).
The only salvation I can see is the application of european working time directives to the transport sector, and yet, because air travel is a social good which governments wish to see provided at minimum cost by the market I'll eat my hat if european unions can ever organise a pan-national campaign well enough to succeed.
Last edited by loaded1; 8th Sep 2004 at 11:25.