A very interesting read, thanks for posting Christep.
Fellow aviators, I think that it's not a bad idea to pay attention to what was written in that post. Christep has basically highlighted something which I think has not received enough attention on our part. The opinion was expressed by someone clearly exposed a little more to the company, albeit on a SLF capacity, than the average punter. Thanks to Millstream, a few things were pointed out to realign perspective a little more from our viewpoint, but the fact remains that a very fair and reasoned post like Christep's (from an outsider's standpoint) underscores the general public's consensus that we are already paid enough as it is, and that we should not be striving to ask for too much. After all, everyone else around us gets a commensurate bag of rice for the amount of revenue they generate for the company, why should we be exempt from that perceived parity?
To encourage more people to part with their money and see the world, the spin surrounding the air travel industry has striven very hard to numb the fact that if someone along our chain of operations is having a bad day, any one of us on the flight deck had better be on our A-game because we're the final barrier between headline news and no news at all. The fact also that every one of us has to go through a battery of checks, incessant self study and training (or checking at CX but that's another story) till we fall off the seniority list, not to mention everything we had to go through before coming to this company, is never emphasised when it comes to pay issues. On top of all this, it's most people's assumption that we should be grateful for being able to do a job we love, that so many people would give their left leg to do if they could. Well, I for one am very grateful. Still have to pay back my loans that got me here though, whilst living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
My point is that, our leverage with the company would be far greater if public opinion could be swayed to see things from our perspective. Too often we are quite happy to shrug shoulders and brush off the notion that on any given day we report for duty, we shoulder a heavier responsibility than the average Central business district worker (no disrespect to lawyers or i-bankers). But I'm also sure that, if someone would list out just what is required of us for any given duty, and made that information publicly available when it came to crunch time, our negotiation position would be substantially stronger. This is Asia, face means a lot more here than many places we come from.
It's time for us to start playing the game at the same level the company does. Who will cast the first die onto the monopoly board?