Re: Delta Pilots Threaten Strike Over Pay Cuts (merged)
Ah - 411a the bete noire of the pprune world. The difference between 411a and rantsalot is 411a likes to provoke but has a bad habit of hitting it on the head.
There is no way <<Once this round of concessions is over then the natural cycle will progress and the big airlines will go back to making billion dollar profits. We will be there when that happens and we will recover our wages.>> is going to happen. Yea, you might get some back but not all of it and you will loose every bit of it at the first whiff of a downturn.
Pilots need to wake up. The old days of protective working agreements and cushy terms are dead. Not just for pilots but for everybody. The good old days depended on being a regulated industry with no competiotion and no real need to make money.
Read what the WTO is really about - it is the free movement of labor , goods and services.Ross Perots great sucking sound is not blue collar jobs to Mexico anymore but white collar jobs to Mumbai. Stop talking to other pilots and find out what is happening to all the other safe jobs that used to be out there.
Airlines are moving from the worlds most regulated and protected industry to another transferable global commodity provider. The customers will rule.
American travelers are not going to pay more to protect US flight crew job. If Jet airways offers a better fare from NYC to LAX they are going to get the traffic.
The only protection a pilot, or any airline employee can get is working for a consistently profitable company. No regualr profits no big dough. The days of strangling the goose for the last golden egg are over.
Pilots can still make good cash but they are going to have to change the way they work. Senority serves a lot of good purposes but it also ties the pilots to an employer that just kills any job mobility and that is going to be the one thing any skilled employee is going to need in the future.
I really have no idea if ALPA gets this it doesn't matter as they do not control the supply of pilots and you can kiss cabotage and all that good stuff good bye.
Sorry guys - welcome to the global economy, you are not immune.