Monopole said:
A modest payrise 2 years ago (lets say somewhere between 10-20 thousand), would have kept a fair wack of the crew (some will always leave), and it would have still been cheaper then the expense of training. The cost would have been passed on to the clients anyway.
I have to pick you up on a couple of things you said there.
Firstly, this "modest payrise" which would have "kept a fair wack of the crew". What is your definition of "kept"? Is it
retained forever or something like
stayed on until having completed 5 years service?
To cause somebody to want to stay forever, the pay rise would have to be way, way more than $20K - it would have to be at least $100K. For this reason, I suspect you mean something like the latter definition.
But would $20K be enough to inspire a person to pass up the offer of a job with Skywest, Jetstar or Virgin to remain on the clapped out old Conquest/Metro/Dash 8 for another few years? I don't think so.
I think not even $30K or $40K would be enough. The major concern, to such a person, if offered the opportunity to move up, would be that the opportunity may not still be there in a few years time - hence they would feel they have to take it now.
How about $50K or $60K? Well, maybe now some pilots will
begin to think about not taking up the offer to move up. Not such a modest payrise any more - but could the company afford this? And how would the Flight Attendants, engineers and various others feel about the pilots getting a $50-60K pay rise?
As for:
The cost would have been passed on to the clients anyway.
You're not the first to say this. Expressed in those words, it sounds so simple, but in reality, this is not so simple.
The clients you refer to would be the mining companies. You could not be referring to the RPT passengers, because for them, the fare increases would have to be at least $500 per ticket, and with that, almost all of them would choose instead to drive or take the bus.
But the arrangement with the mining companies are
contracts, negotiated months or years earlier. Think you can just up the pilot wages then send invoices out to the mining companies to cover the cost? That would be like a painter, having reached an agreement with you on the price to paint your house, coming to you half way through the job and asking for an extra $500 because he wants to give himself and his assistant a pay rise.
I can believe the contracts allow for the passing on of fuel price and security surcharge increases, but not salary increases.
So, the only way to pass on salary increase costs is to: wait until the current contract expires, then when bidding to renew the contract, add in the extra costs.
But of course, you wouldn't try to pass on
all the extra costs to the
one contract. You would plan to plan to win/renew certain future contracts so the costs would then be divided up between those contracts.
But, what if, 1-2 years later, you haven't won/rewewed all the contracts you were banking on,
but have awarded the pilots the not so modest pay rise?