Rip Off
I have just been reading the article on the inside of the back cover of Flight International dated 21 – 27 September and titled Training in Focus.
Whilst I fully agree with Mr Alan Maskell’s comments about the shortage of professional, skilled maintenance engineers in the UK and the lack of training to provide them. Has he and others thought about why there is a lack of enthusiasm with in the trade to remain and to recommend the job to others.
I have been in the aviation industry for just over 30 years having done my time at British Airways at Heathrow as an Avionics Engineer. I consider the training done by them at the time to be second to none and have regularly blessed the level to which it went when confronted by snags on aircraft, even today with modern computer aided diagnostics built into the aircraft.
I left BA in 1986 to seek pastures new and some adventure. This meant entering the world of contracting and the numerous contracting agencies that offered pots of gold and endless opportunities of a good life to those who signed on the dotted line. That was 1986. Today we have many more of these agencies that promise lots, pay wages which are an insult and at end of the day lie about things. People working in aviation doing a job on a multi million Euro, Dollar or Pound aircraft deserve more than £10.50 per hour doing modifications, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Some agencies offer 70 plus hours a week. How good are you after 45 hours. They claim not to be able to pay more as it is the customer who sets the rates. I thought we lived in a market economy. Usually if there is a shortage then the price goes up. I think that a lot of the agencies have forgotten that it is the workers who pay their wages, not the other way around, without the workers no income. The agencies continue to preach poverty, not seen a poor agency yet. They think that the workers are a bunch of idiots and lie about the terms of the contracts, only to be found out from the customer, ‘we are paying the agency £40 per hour for you plus accommodation and transport and you are only getting £13.50 an hour and paying for your own accommodation and car’. This is common in many variations these days.
If you want people to remain in the industry and not leave to become domestic electricians, plumbers and work on the railways, start treating your engineers with respect they deserve. To be told a bunch of lies by a 20 year old secretary who has never been on an aircraft except to Spain on holiday ‘that they are dealing with it’ has gone on to long.
Word of mouth still means a lot these days and any youngster looking for a job would do well with a recognised apprenticeship, even a modern one, but don’t go into the contracting game when you leave your time, its full of crooks.