UAL furlough,
Sorry for the inaccuracies regarding the state of the major airline situation.
Since that sphere of operations is totally outside my range of aspirations, I was not fully up-to-date obviously on the situation, and when writing the comment did not have time to go and research the specifics concerning each company. Obviously because of your situation, you are much better informed in that sphere than I am.
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Despite the fact that management could simply raise the price of a ticket from $1-$3
It isn't that simple. Carriers often try to raise ticket prices, simply to have to reduce them when others don't match. There is a point that they lose market share when they raise the ticket. Also, with the cumulative losses in the billions they need to raise the prices just to make a profit. I am sure they won't just give it to the pilots.
Just to expand on this point, yes, I am aware of that, I made the point in my comments concerning this problem. As I mentioned $1-$3 ticket price increase is not the same as increasing its 20, 50 or $100, and then when no one else does so, passengers go to your competition. As we are all aware, this is the problem that prevents the airline industry from ever making a real profit, even in the good times of more than a few percent.
In other words, the airline industry seems to be one of those industries, where they cannot pass on price increases to their customers or increase their prices, even by a few dollars to increase profits. Of course, what they do, as they have done around the world, is put surcharges for example for fuel and security fees onto what the basic price of a ticket is and pass on their costs that way. Usually when this has happened, of course, everybody has instituted these fees at the same time to remain competitive.
So, given this situation we are back to what I talked about before, where in order to maximise profits, after increasing efficiencies in operations etc, the only other way to cut costs is to basically screw the employees over by reducing their pay, benefits and conditions.
Due to consumer laws in both the US and Australia, of course, companies can't all get together and decide they need to increase their prices by a certain percentage, so they will do so at the same time, and then everybody is still “even” so to speak. Collusion and price-fixing is what they call it, and of course that is against consumer laws.
So you could almost say, it is like a bunch of children standing around the edge of a swimming pool and no one wants to be the first in the for fear that no one else will follow and they will be the only one who gets wet.
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Do not bother about converting the currencies as a dollar here buys the same if not less than a dollar in Australia.
Not true, your dollars go a lot further on day to day living in America. First, the tax system in Australia eats it very quickly. Also, because you can fly for free on any airline's jumpseat in America, commuting is much more feasible and likely. This way, you can live in a lower cost area and commute to work. You don't need to buy a house in Los Angeles or New York, which are comparable in price to Sydney. Also, there are a lot more medium sized cities in the U.S. where the cost of living is great. I left the U.S. after furlough from United where I had lived in Wisconsin and flew out of Chicago (2 hour drive). I had a 6 bedroom house, 4 car garage, 10 acres and I sold it for $189,000. When I got to Australia I couldn't touch a house in Sydney and ended up paying $450,000 (The Sunshine Coast) for a 600m2 block of land with a 4 bedroom house 1/3 the size of my Wisconsin house. The car I sold in America sold for $22,000 the same car in Australia cost $72,000. Health care is cheaper here though.
Anyway, although jobs are a bit hard to come by now, the industry is very cyclic, especially in the U.S. and times will be better again. When I got hired at United, they hired over 4000 pilots in 3 years and in my 2nd year I was an international B-767 f/o making about $135,000 per year basic salary. B-747 Captains were on $300,000 per year.
As just a GA driver, who is now unemployed yet again after being laid off from the small company I worked for, and having been grossly underemployed for my entire “career”, and I shouldn't even really use that word to describe it, I have never even been able to even dream about the life situation you have been through, and that you describe above.
I was speaking more from my humble experience, concerning paying just day-to-day bills for basic goods and services, whilst living in a small rented one-bedroom apartment and struggling to survive and keep my sanity.
I am aware, the tax system in Australia is far worse than in the US although it has gotten far better in recent years than it was in the past, especially regarding tax rates for different income brackets, the bracket limits have increased substantially over the years. For example, I remember less than 10 years ago, when if you earned more than AUD $50,000, you were in the 50% tax bracket!!!!