Depends what segment of the market you're talking about. It remains the case that at some point increasing real wages reduces employment. I don't like it but that doesn't stop me accepting the economic reality of it. One segment of our potential customer base happily pays for their own executive jet and the other end will get on a bus if the airfares rise more than X%.
You going to try and tell us that if every pilot was on mainline T&Cs there would be as many pilots flying jets in Oz?
That DOES NOT mean there can't be more pilots on mainline T&Cs - just not in J*/
VB/Tiger. I'd love to see QF mainline expand just as much as the FOs there would.
So I still haven't heard anyone come up with a good reason why a proportion of the JQ pilots are climbing the walls and banging their heads on the ceiling?
Aspects of the industry or individual human nature that are as old as the industry don't cut it.
Live on my knees?
Nope...couldn't be further from the truth - if you knew me and what I have done over the years you'd be mortified at that statement.
Some things are most assuredly worth fighting for.
Those J* pilots getting all worked up at the moment - let alone risking their careers - don't have a clue, in my opinion, how lucky they are.
When JQ attacks your EBA T&Cs, suggests pilots might like to share a room on overnights, or slash recurrent training, scare EBA staff into lower paid subsidiaries (like
VB did) - if your CP tries to interfere with your fuel decisions - if your C&Ting department go rogue - if your traffic staff start trying to overload you secretly - your engineers are pressured to start pencil whipping defects...then I'll stand and applaud whatever actions you deem appropriate. I have seen all that over the course of a career.
One of the main reasons the 'unity' you all bang on about is illusory is things are nowhere near dire enough.
After WW2 the pilot market was flooded with truly experienced pilots - vastly more than the industry could absorb - how would you like to have been a freshly minted CPL in 1950 competing with ex wartime pilots for a job...any fcking job?
T&Cs in the 1950s and early 60s were TRULY DIRE. 100+ hrs a month of long days in a Dak/Anson interspersed with nights sharing a room in a tin shed with two army surplus cots off the side of some pub, or hangar, in an outback town. Low pay/not much in the way of leave/sick pay/super...don't like it? Fck off!
That united enough of the pilot workforce for long enough - and it took YEARS - to slowly drag the T&Cs to where they were in the 70s/80s.
That unity collapsed in '89.
Despite rampant inflation in the late 70s/early 80s (about 17%/annum) eating away at the purchasing power of wages (the reason they thought a 30% pay rise was justifiable - and I agree with them) domestic pilots T&Cs were still pretty bloody good compared to most Australians. Ask any pre 89 domestic pilot and if he gives you an honest answer you'll be amazed.
89 was much like now in many respects. A group of pilots were REALLY worked up (with some justification and prodding from dark forces). Their emotions took them WAY beyond rational and the rest is history. They misread the (changed) world around them. The AFAP leadership was not near as honest as you'd like them to be in that situation. Example? "We will not submit your resignations before having another meeting and voting on it" Pilots awoke the next morning, turned on the radio and discovered they had resigned en masse.
Unity collapsed because T&Cs were really not that dire to begin with - and the new individual contracts were better still.
There is not ONE company that went into the dispute that survives to this day by the way - for years after 1989 there were fewer pilots flying jet aircraft in Australia. I spent many more years in GA (having a ball) than I would have otherwise. The dispute ENDED a world wide pilot shortage of monumental proportions.
A large % of the senior captains in the industry now were junior FOs in 1989 - I was a freshly minted Twotter bush pilot - quite a few of my mates had only been FOs on F28s/F27s etc for 6 months after years in GA. They were VERY much like the FOs in J* today - young and industrially naive - and like young people more generally, convinced they can make the world a better place. They truly believed what they were told by their seniors, "Don't worry if we stick together we'll beat the bastards and save this industry for you and the pilots that come after you" type rhetoric.
The following years are seared in their memories and those of their families - what most suffered in the next 5 years makes a base change at J* look like a hard day at Kindy.
They look at what THEY have achieved for YOU in the last 5 years at J* and sit stunned at what they see going on around them.
Unity? Never going to happen on any of the issues I have seen put forth in the last few years.
Sacrifice a career? Sorry don't think so.
Don't get me wrong - if I was MR and JE came to my office tomorrow and apologised sincerely and asked for his job back I would be very tempted to put it down to impetuous youth - give him a long hard talking at - stick him back in the RHS and watch him closely for a few years. I can empathise with JE without agreeing with him. He's probably a great guy but I think he was VERY dumb to do what he did.
It has probably gone beyond that point.
I think I have put up with about enough vitriol aimed in my direction because I hold a different view to most of you. If you achieve a sense of higher calling/purpose by winding yourselves up into a frenzy and making yourselves look a bit silly, in my opinion, to your employer then so be it. If you don't think credibility with your employer
and the general public is important if it ever gets to really important issues then you knock yourselves out.
Good luck and happy landings to you all...I have tried to give you a different perspective (and you might be amazed how many supportive PMs these posts have attracted - unity?). I am off back to Tiger Moth/PNG/C185 threads
