InFin
One of your comments to Raw Data was to assert that his arguments were “one-sided” followed by your statement that yours were spoken from a position of “seeing both sides -which is why I was always considered fair to all the pilots I employed”. Well, I guess there is nothing quite like blowing your own trumpet.
When RD asked you to state 3 other industries where expensive training was NOT bonded, you replied “Army, Navy and Air Force”. Come on, now. RD was not referring to training from raw, totally inexperienced recruit to operational readiness with provision by the employer of food, accommodation etcetera, even the clothes on the back of the trainee. Nor was he referring to training for defence of the realm; training that, in the case of pilots at least, costs millions. Compare like with like and come up with 3 other industries, if you can.
With respect to the BA analogy, you said: “But had you been around in the 80's when the problem first surfaced it had a dire effect on several operations - some of whom went under.” Please tell us to which “problem” you refer, and then explain how bonding might, in your view, have saved such companies from going under. I too can think of several companies that went under in the era to which you refer. However, I cannot think of one that went under because it had failed to bond its aircrew. Most went under simply because they deserved little better given the way they were set up in the first instance and then subsequently run (survival of the fittest and all that).
You plead ignorance as to the “bonded (bank) loan”, admitting that it sounds an unsavoury practice, then later suggest that RD’s employer does not use the “stick” approach. Clearly, then, you either don’t know who RD’s employers are or you are indeed ignorant as to current bonding methods. For the record, I think you will find that RD’s employer does bond its pilots via the bank loan method, and it bonds in very large sums given the types it operates.
You know, it really does worry me to read posts like yours that talk about pilots “wanting a job” as if that is abnormal, then following it up with assertions as to pilots and airlines being “an integral part of each other” and that “one doesn't work without the other and, therefore, it is a joint agreement and effort … to make the airline profitable”. As I’ve said on another similar thread, this is certainly, as you say, a two way street in that employers need the pilots and vice versa.
However, it is not the pilots’ responsibility to make airlines profitable. There is a thin line between this assertion and the negative commercial pressure that might just drive an airline beyond safety and into oblivion. Pilots should never concentrate on profitability. The day they do is the day it would be wise to avoid flying.
You are, of course, quite right to speak of an employer’s right to change Terms and Conditions of Employment. You did, however, omit to mention the fact that such changes cannot be made unilaterally without constituting a breach of contract.
Finally, I am concerned by your reference to RD’s nationality as if it has some bearing on the validity of what he says. That “we do what we do because we are what we are” is not a valid justification for the way that our airlines currently handle the bonding issue. If it is, then it speaks volumes about precisely “what we are” (enough said, I think). Surely you can do better than that, can’t you?