My, this is getting a little heated, isn't it?
To those of you shelling out for TRs and preparing to work for little or nothing, remember that what you get paid reflects what you think you are worth. The employer will pay no more than he can get away with. If you think you are worth nothing, then you will accept nothing and the employer will laugh his way to the bank.
A couple of years down the line, you will expect to get paid what you saw SFOs getting paid at your airline when you joined. After all, this is why you joined, right? But the employer now has you by the short and curlies. You are committed; you have loans to repay and you may be bonded as well. When the employer announces that, from 2008, FO's pay is going to be reduced by 20% for all those who joined in 2006 and later, where's your leverage? You just have to bite the bullet and accept it - you can't leave, you're too deeply in it to get out. You can't strike; your employer would sack you (you never joined the union...) and you'd be back at square one - and there are thousands of other wannabes crawling over each other to get your job. A few years further down the line, your employer offers you a command - but you've got to pay for the conversion training, you will have to pay any moving expenses, and the pay now offered is 20% below that of the guys a few years ahead of you. 'Sod that' you think, 'Time to go to Virgin or BA and get out of this particular pig sty'. You apply - and find that the terms you are offered are a great deal different - and a lot worse - from those offered to those who went before you. Why is that? Because the employers already know what you think you are worth - you've already proved it.
If you think this is an unlikely scenario, you're wrong. It's happened exactly like that in many airlines, here and abroad, over and over again. It's sometimes known as a 'B' scale, or a job realignment or whatever, but it comes as a result of large numbers of people accepting lower than previous remuneration for the initial jobs on the scale at times when jobs are scarce and applicants many. As a recent example, look at BA's new pilot contract with its pathetic pension arrangements. Market economics? Yes, but the market is subject to pressures from both employers and employees. You are not helpless victims of the market; your actions influence it.
Of course, if you had trodden the less expensive path of FI, TPs and so on, you'd be a few years older, a lot wiser, and a lot less in debt when you came to look for a jet job - and therefore the airline wouldn't have such a hold over you and you could apply more discretion in your choice of employer. But you'd have to ditch the 'I want it all and I want it now' attitude, and I doubt that many of you would do so until it's too late.
Now, I don't put all the blame on those at the bottom of the pile, though I do ask you to think seriously about the consequences of your actions. they are unlikely to affect me, but they will affect you and your peers. How can we retrieve the situation? Do what Ryanair and others have not done - get the existing pilots to work together in protecting the terms and conditions of all pilots (including new-joiners) in their company. That can only be achieved by strong, united and determined union representation. It's worked in Virgin. It's working now in easyJet. It's failing (but maybe retrievable) in BA. It could work in Ryanair, but it's not. Remember that once you get in.
Scroggs