Hope airlines dont go the way of NHS.
I have watched this thread grow and have to add something important which can be viewed as a parrallel to what the airlines are going through and hopefully avoid the pitfalls of another industry.
I started working for the NHS in 1998 through an agency as a care nurse which anyone here can do with a day training. It was not uncommon for me to earn more than qualified nurses who went to train for three years. When we started discussing pay with the permanent staff they began to jump ship. Staff will then call in sick not becauce they are sick but because they want to go and work for an ageny at a different hospital to compensate thier mearge nhs salary.
To those of you wondering what I am on about imaging Scroggs telling virgin flight ops that he's sick and cannot work for one week. He then goes to work as a relief captain for say easyjet through an agency like Brookfields or parc and in that one week he earns the equivalent of 75% of his normaly 1 month salary with virgin. While the airline industry is still far away from this ridiculous situation ryanair seems to have set the wheels in motion albeit in slow motion. If the NHS was a private business it would have been bankrupt beyond salvage years ago.
If you dont believe it a lot of you guys here have sisters, mums or daughters that work as nurses in hospitals feel free to ask them. On one ward I used to work half of the qualified nurses regularly called in sick for absolutely no reason order than to go and work for an agency. Soon newly qualified nurses rather than apply to work in an hospital they went full time on agency and boy did they earn money!!
If you are wondering what effect this had on patient welfare that will require a different thread completly as this is not a nursing forum. The only thing I can say is that if anyone had a relative that was suffering from mental illness that needed treatment a couple of years ago I would advise the person to go private or give them emotional support at home rather than have them admited to some of the hospitals I worked in. Of course like most airlines the buildings look very beautifull from outside but then its whats going on inside that counts.
For about three years in to the job it was not uncommon when working in a ward and asking the qualified nurses how long they've been there fo them to say upwards of five six years and occasionally the older ones have been in the same hospitall for fifteen or more years. From 2002 upwards nurses hardly stayed in the same ward or hospital for more than a year before either quitting or joining the community. This wouldn't have been apparent as there was a constant supply from African countries and the Phillipines. They were tempted with good old British pound and tied up with five year work permits. If it was possible for Ryanair to lobby for this arrangement with pilots in the same way I'm sure Oleary would.
I knew a lot of qualified nurses that pulled in £47,000 a year before taxes working for agencies, this was as far back as six years ago. So when you switch on the good old BBC or read the guardian and they tell you hospitals are in deficit due to underfunding, and that labour should increase funding becauce the tories will cut it. I often came to the conclusion that some of the politicians and journalists should be the ones on the pshychiatric wards I've worked in.
The people that got rich of course was not the hospitals who thought they could foolishly save money by not having to worry about pension arrangements and unions but the agency owners who supplied the nurses (ctc, brookfield, parc and the rest of them) in the airline industry. After about six years of trial and error the nhs is only now coming to thier senses my friends that are qualified now have been offered better pay conditions as it is much better now to go full time. Sadly it has taken billions of taxpayers money which Gordon Brown still continues to ask for more with his obssesion with bearucracy and targets . So if you are wondering why there is so much fuss about a pension hole thats where part of the money went.
I've only just gotten my atpl so I am not in the industry now and dont admit to beign an expert but I am hoping those of you that are there already will not develop a false sense of security and a myopic focus on getting out of training debt which most of us have by accepting ridiculous working conditions in the name of achieving your dreams. If you are thinking only new joiners will be affected by the t&c's that is been offered by ryanair and the likes of them think again and you only need to look at the NHS. Eventually and not too long from now everyone will be affected, even those with thousands of hours on jet thinking they are safe. In the main time I need to fill more applications.