And what happens when the arse falls out of the economy?
Wholesale sackings 'cos your Collective Agreement allows it ?.
Who is Management going to sack first? Is it by seniority,last on first off ?, are you sure now?
What sort of redundancy package are you going to get?
Looking at the Qantas Long Haul agreement that a mate gave me to read I can now see why pilots went on strike back in the early '60's to get the North American Contract.
It appears that this contract/award is a very descriptive work.
I'm told the descriptive nature of the contract was to protect the pilots as a direct consequence of the bastardry dished out by Management of the time ,sound familiar.
The result is now over 40 years of industrial harmony (he says tongue in cheek) for Qantas. I wonder how much longer that's going to last?
Is it any wonder that so many pilots are worried. No longer is there a cushioning from the real world through a protective Contract/Award.
Yes I know ,welcome to the real world.
However what can history tell us about what is now transpiring?
Look back to the 50's and 60's.
Post WW2 lots of demobbed trained pilots, result, crap pay and conditions, supply and demand and all that.
It however still cost a small fortune relative to average wage even back then to learn to fly. End result ,aviation was never a first choice as a career for anyone but the passionate.
Then comes the Jet age , aircraft become more economical , there is a massive expansion , guess what ,not enough pilots to feed the expansion though, because the pay was crap and you were never home,so not enough people could afford or want to be a pilot. Solution, the airlines had to pay people to become pilots.
Move forward a few years and the growing numbers of pilots become more politically savvy and the end result after a lot of industrial argy bargy was a water tight contract that went a long way towards neutering what management euphemistically called their "Management Perogative"
Fast forward even further to today and the wheel appears to have turned full circle.
I wonder what happens next with this little story?