My thoughts are that this sort of thread is the big downside to Pprune...we tell management exactly how to fck us over.
Can anyone imagine a management forum where we can go and read their plans for us...or where we can glean how to beat them at their own game?
Personally I think that QF's record profits have very little future...extracted as they seem to be from staff rather than expanded route networks/passenger numbers and higher yield.
That is a road with very little distance to the dead end and resulting big wreck....but as we all know management won't be around to be pulled bleeding from the wreckage...just the staff who are generally the only employees who have any real stake in the long term viability of a company like QF.
I actually believe that sooner or later management will piss employees off to such an extent that they will unite employees again...I can see a day when pilots are as united as Doctors and Lawyers....maybe not next year but one day.
What form will it take?
Hard to say...what about membership of a pilot's trade union (in the literal sense of 'trade union') being compulsory to gain employment in any form...from Grade 3 instructor to B744 Captain? Where for a few % of your pay, whatever that may be, you are represented by a full time staff of negotiators/legal reps who have no affiliation with employers and only work for the trade union. This union would have a full time rep for GA and a different rep for airlines, air ag or whatever. He/she is not a pilot but an expert in negotiation and employment law. A seperate section would have pilot reps, voted by a majority of members, who's job it is to represent the professional views of the members from that section of industry...Instructors would vote for their reps, regional pilots for their reps and 'mainline' pilots for their reps. These reps might have to be part time as the preference would be for current or recently retired pilots who have an outstanding record and are respected by their peers.
It would have to have some teeth too...if a member tries to short circuit the system by working for below award wages or back stabs fellow members to get ahead he is sanctioned somehow.
Sounds like the AFAP in it's glory days of the 60s and 70s...probably can't happen until the last bastion of group selfishness is broken down...the AIPA...when they realise their own futures are at risk without a united voice from every pilot down to a C210 VFR charter driver in Darwin then things will improve.
But the AFAP of the 60s and 70s was a product of the draconian employment conditions of pilots in the 40s and 50s.
It will be interested to see how QF mainline pilots vote in future at their AIPA elections...perhaps they can vote for an amendment to their constitution that says going from AIPA committee to management is not allowed under any circumstances.
Won't happen overnight but like most things in life cycles happen...does anyone think that the CX A scale just happened because of generous management?
It may also need a change of Govt and a review of employment law that re levels the playing field...brings back some social conscience....that's probably unlikely without great social upheaval...but that upheaval is where current 'management' and Govt policies are taking us.