Hans,
I doubt many people would dispute the fact that EK is not the worst out there, it is we hope a stable job with long term prospects. But, its like a train and how you view the journey depends on which station you got on. I was taught as a lad to respect the views of my seniors because they had seen it all before. I thought it was a load of bunk then but maybe there is actually some truth to it.
If lets say you had got on the train in 2000, you would have been earning 16700AED/Mth. Using the UAE's official government figures for inflation (excluding all the expensive things like rent) you would need to be paid 21700AED/Mth to have the same standard of living joining now as in 2000. Using those numbers, a new joiner gets 18370/Mth which means guys are already prepared to work 15% harder for 15% less pay than in 2000.
If you look at real inflation, an excerpt from an article is attached below, you would actually need to earn around 24,300AED/Mth to have the same standard of living. That means 15% harder for 25% less pay!
Now if you go back even further to 1992, using the governments official figures (1992-2000; 52%. 2000-2005; 29%) to have the same standard of living you would need to earn 28,400AED/Mth. (For real probably 35,000AED). That means 15% harder for 35-50% less pay!
Now you are getting on the train and things look pretty good from where you are standing whilst guys that have been here for a while are moaning about how their conditions have deteriorated. They have! You are prepared to come and work harder for nearly half in real terms of the salary paid to an F/O 15 years ago. For the senior guys it feels even worse because they peak out and then every year they stay they end up working for less and less.
Yes things have changed in the industry and terms and conditions have dropped globally but now the airline is trying to squeeze every drop of blood out of every employee for less and less pay in real terms. That is why guys are now leaving. When I joined it was accepted that it wasn't the best paid job in the world and that we worked a little harder than average but morale was good and most guys enjoyed a better standard of living than before. There was a generally good atmosphere because people felt valued.
You could go to the beach and a 10 minute car journey took 10 minutes. Now the nearest open beach is in Jebel Ali and a 10 minute car journey defies Einstein by taking 40 minutes with 10 near death experiences. No one was leaving then. Now friends of mine that have always been pro-EK are looking to bail because they do not see an end in sight. Leaving home was a good idea because you could make yourself financially stable after a few years. To do that now you will have to stay till 60 and I for one cannot imagine being 60 sleeping in the crew rest on an 18 hour flight from god knows where. I certainly don't feel valued more abused.
The funny thing about it all was that when I got on the train I couldn't understand what the senior guys were on about. I can now!!
Schnowzer
In the UAE, for example, the price of petrol at the fuel stations increased by 32 percent On September 1st. According to a recent survey by Gulf Talent, a Dubai based recruitment agency, rents in the emirate rose 34 percent in the past year. The consumer price index computed by the UAE Central Bank does factor in rents, which are weighted as a third of the index, yet the official inflation figure of 4.7 percent does not seem to reflect the findings of the survey. “Business Monitor International” found that rents in the UAE increased by 20 to 40 percent from last year, as did prices of household goods and services, though relatively less.
A number of informal indicators suggest that the rate of inflation is much greater than what official statistics indicate. A recent survey by HSBC, the Middle East Business Confidence Index (MEBCI), found that a large proportion of businessmen and women were feeling the pinch of higher prices. Almost 70 percent of those questioned, felt that the cost of living had risen by more than 20 percent over the year, and 26 percent thought that it had risen by a staggering 40 percent or more.
Independent studies have also found the price of goods and services are growing faster than what is officially reported. Standard Chartered Plc estimated that prices for goods and services in the UAE rose 10 percent on average last year. London-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting found Dubai to have jumped ten places to become more expensive a city to live in than the likes of Washington.
There is also evidence of second round effects of inflation occurring in the labor market. Many GCC countries have increased wages in the public sector this year. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, wages rose by 15 percent; in the UAE, public sector pay was increased by 25 percent for nationals and 15 percent for expatriates, while Kuwaiti nationals received one-off cash bonuses of $ 680 each from the government last year. Such wage increases and cash bonuses improve the real income of nationals and public sector workers, but at the same time generate extra demand; and in an economy already suffering from supply shortages, it pushes prices even higher.