You guys just don't get it. If you just took a look around you, you would. But if that is too hard, you only need to read between the lines of every second PPRUNE thread.
Terms and conditions for pilots, all over the world, are steadily reducing and have been so for decades. With booming economic conditions you will occasionally see short term reversals to this trend, but these are just little wiggles on the line that represents the long term trend.
The airline pilot strike of 1989 was an attempt by pilots to change the direction of that line. There have been numerous other attempts by pilot groups around the world. American Airlines pilots are currently contemplating another attempt, as are the NJS pilots.
My money is on the aviation industry to brush aside these attempts, should they occur. That means, I am betting against the pilots to succeed. The aviation industry is just too good at getting its own way.
The fundamental reason for the decline in T&Cs, of course, is that everything in aviation has had to become steadily cheaper to facilitate the ever cheaper air travel for the people of the world - cheaper aircraft, engines, maintenance, management - and cheaper pilots.
On top of all that, aviation has always been the world's least profitable industry. If you average out the profits made by the world scheduled airline industry for the 54 years prior to 2001, you find that each operator averages $1,000 (USD) profit per year. One thousand dollars - how's that for razor thin profits?
Problems and solutions...
To the people of the world, enjoying plentiful and cheap air travel, there is no problem.
To the industry, the problem is a shortage of pilots and an inability to train new pilots quickly enough. There is only one practical solution to that, as I said in my previous post, and that is pilotless airliners. The only question about pilotless airliners is when - in 10 years time, 15, or 20? Would anybody like to come out and declare that there will never be pilotless airliners?
To the pilots, the problem is a remuneration level that is headed for the poverty line, but as I said in my previous post, there is no practical solution to this problem. Participants to this debate must realise that, just because there is a problem, it doesn't necessarily follow that there is a solution. The profession of airline pilot would by no means be the first in the world that has been made extinct by the market that it serves, and every one of those extinctions started out as just "a problem".
Hugh Jarse,
Other airlines and GA operators are taking steps in the right direction with significant pay rises and retention payments...
Can you elaborate?
There are always realistic solutions, aircraft.
To the idealist, yes, but to the pragmatist, no. Paying the pilots more money is not a realistic solution if it results in the company going broke.
... who has a better handle on the marketplace than your front-line staff?
This is a particularly widespread misconception. I'm not saying they shouldn't be consulted, but the reality is that front-line staff tend to have only a "small picture" view of the marketplace.
REX isn't alone in its inability or unwillingness to understand, engage and manage its workforce.
I believe this statement is just a populist way of saying the management need to "be nice" to the workers. Populist? maybe that should be "political".
How on earth can you say that the management doesn't
understand its workforce? Every one of those managers are workers too, working for somebody higher up. Every one has worked in more lowly, "front-line" positions earlier in their lives. Do they forget what its like to be an ordinary worker when they move up? Does a parent forget what its like to be a teenager?
No matter how hard you try, the vast majority of workers
do not want to be
engaged. They just want to be allowed to do their jobs without fuss, collect their paycheques then go home.
As for not
managing its workforce: How is it possible to do this? The only way I can think of doing this is to give them no job descriptions, rosters or tasks - just let them wander around the workplace doing whatever takes their fancy, in other words. I'm certain that this is not what happens at REX. Of course there will be rostering/tasking mistakes made, from time to time, but this is what happens when you have humans as managers.
I am really beginning to think that when you said "REX is unable or unwilling to understand, engage and manage its workforce", you really meant that REX are just not being nice enough.
So, are the workers understanding and engaging REX? Or should I say, are the workers being nice to REX?
If the REX pilots are anything like the pilots in the company I presently work for (and the companies I have worked at), then it will be the case that a significant number of them treat the company with disdain - to be used and abused then dropped like a hot potato when something better comes along.
It never seems to occur to these individuals that it is their own disregard for the company that is being reflected back when, following some dealing with management, they don't get the favourable result they were expecting.
But I have also seen good relationships, and it is noticeable how much more often the pilot gets the "favourable result" in those cases.
About the disaffected staff at REX that "don't want to leave, but are", you said:
Ask them why, and THINK OUTSIDE THE SQUARE when formulating the solution
Hugh Jarse, you are in the position to have asked them why, and, you will have thought outside the square when seeking a solution.
What do you come up with?