Highlow, I don't work for RYR, so I have no specific knowledge of what's going on there, which is why I ask the question.
Why the anti-management biasthough? This is something that drives me nuts in this game. This adversarial stance between head office and crew doesn't help anyone and it's something that I hope I can help to start to change in a small way.
I'm not on the "other side of the fence" I know exactly goes on in the cockpit and the pressures people are under. Just because I made the decision to get into another part of the business, doesn't mean that I want to shaft anyone or do anything but make the business stronger, which should mean that everyones jobs are more secure and the chances of better renumeration are there.
I've flown for an airline that went bust and which before that treated it's staff so appallingly, that M'OL comes across like a fairy God-Mother in comparison. However, a lot of people would have them up as a good place. They paid for your rating and all other costs as you were on a fulltime contract, but rostering was a shambles, every decision was questioned and the aircraft were a mess.
To get a stable company, it needs to be efficient. In this era of huge competition, then it means that pilots need to work a bit harder than they did 30 years ago. That's just the way of it.
I'm not a fan of the way RYR uses contractors instead of proper staff. Somehow they've managed to pull of the trick of paying people a fulltimers wage, but without the job security of being a full time employee. Honestly, it's a genius move and whilst I don't like much of what RYR do, you have to respect the way they go about their business. I should think whoever came up with that particular "solution" was initially shouted down with cries of "They'll never fall for that!"
But they did fall for it and continue to do so.
RYR's job is to provide profit for it's shareholders and they do that very well.
Why don't pilots try to think like business people. Instead of just whinging about how certain practises are "unfair." Make a case for why things should change, don't just bleat.
I remember an HR person asked a bunch of pilots and engineers to come up with a case why each of them should be paid more than the other. All that came from the pilots (and I was one of them) was "pay us more, 'cos we is pilots innit and therefore officially awesome." Instead of making the case for how critical pilots are to the business and how what we do has a significant effect on the bottom line.
Once we'd had that bit of advice, it was easy to put together a business case for how pilots should get paid more, but the vast majority of people who post on Pprune simply blow hot air and never actually do anything other than get indignant and shouty.
This makes pilots easy meat for someone in management who's job it is to save money, but keep the same service level. Which is what I am doing BTW. I'm a business analyst which means I look at how things are being done and improve them.
Individually pilots are usually smart people, but as a group, we're pretty dumb really.
Last edited by Say again s l o w l y; 23rd January 2011 at 10:31.