WWW, you've just proved my point for me.
You wouldn't stand up for it as you'd get fired. You have the benefit of at least being able to go into the CP's office and have a word about it. What choice does a desperate, skint, inexperienced identikit wannabee F/O have?
How does one of them saying "No, I won't take the job because it goes against my principles" change anything? There are 500 other people who jump in their shoes without blinking and they know it, as does everyone else.
You as a Captain or line trainer don't have the power to fix it on your own, but if you, I and all of the other more senior pilots got together along with the BALPA CC and kicked up a stink, then something is more likely to happen. Nothing guaranteed of course, but did you stick up for your more inexperienced colleagues by actually doing anything? Or do you think that whinging on a website actually makes the blindest bit of difference?
You are trying to defend the indefensible. Wannabees haven't helped themselves, but the rest of us in the industry should be ashamed that we have done **** all aswell. I don't hold myself blameless BTW, we all have had our part to play.
You are mixing up the oversupply problem, with the problem of P2F. Just because there are more frozen ATPL's than jobs doesn't mean that P2F becomes acceptable. It just means that people will be more competitive, that's human nature and to try and rail against that is madness. The only form of control that could have worked would have been for organisations such as BALPA to have been proactive when this started to happen. Not sit in their ivory towers and throw insults at the people who are trying to get into the industry however they can.
I went through the FI, turboprop route and I will never disagree that it is the best way. I dislike the idea of 250hr pilots getting into the RHS of a jet for a variety of reasons, but where are those FI and turboprop jobs at the moment?
An FI is basically an indentured slave and even a turbprop driver earns naff all. If I'd had the opportunity to get into a jet aged 22, then I'd have snapped it up on purely financial reasons and sod anyone else. I worked my backside off to get into this business and I'm not beholden to you or anyone else. My priority is me.
The fact is that the piloting profession is made up of people who are purely interested in their own welfare. That goes for the senior people who have done absolutely nothing other than whinge in the crew room and on here about P2F and for the wanabees who would climb over their Grandmother to get a job. It's only now that senior people are seeing their T's and C's being eroded that they are kicking up a stink. Well, boo-hoo. You had the chance to help yourself, but it wasn't taken and now you have the temerity to blame newbies for this situation...Oh please.
Sometimes I'm embarrassed to call myself a pilot when I think about the self centred attitude of most members of our profession. (Including myself at times.)
P2F isn't going anywhere unless there is a concerted effort from people with some power to stop it. Either employed pilots, BALPA, Government or pax kicking off about it (though few seem to give a t*ss as long as they get a 99p flight to Marbella) might work, but asking a disparate, unconnected group such as deaperate wannabees to take the stand on this is so gob smackingly naive as to defy belief.
You might aswell try to stop a chimp from flinging poo by asking nicely.
We are all to blame for this.