It's getting a little bit "feline" in here at the moment.
At the end of the day - re - hand flying and autopilot - we live in a culture where FDM and fear of our jobs dictates how we do our jobs. I can understand why some people aren't overly happy doing visual approaches - especially if it's the first time that they have flown together. Equally, I think that the hand flying is a good thing to practice on a regular basis. It is good to knock out the autopilo tand actually fly... but at the end of the day, turbowhats comment goes the other way too - if he was the Captain, then it's licence on the wire, and if there was an incident on the approach that they got snagged for, then it would be both of them who come into trouble.
Granted, if I'm honest, I know of one or two people who really do not like it if the autopilot is out though. However, the work around is quite simple - you don't do it until minima and accept that you're not going to hand fly for the day. It's no problem - we've got many days of flying this junk heap around, and there will be another time.
As for FOs being exploited in Greece... every tiny bloody thing this company does borders on exploitation anyway. See:
1/ Smart pensions (Opt out, but if we don't hear from you, you're in) - and also the "We'll make the great saving, but initially, you will get none of it at all and it will line our bloody pockets instead". Now, I believe the company have agreed on 50% coming back to us. But I still believe this to be illegal, or questionable at the least.
2/ BSB - need I say more? It erases the need for a disruption payment to be paid to crew, by getting others from other bases to cover.
3/ Our pay. Well below industry rates for the aircraft we operate
4/ Their pay. Yes, it is a "us and them" situation at the moment. They get richer, we get poorer.
5/ The length of our days/crew utilisation. 11:30 duty day anyone?
6/ Our duty pay. Pathetic.
7/ Our crew food. Cheap to produce, about as healthy as what a dog eats.
8/ Greece. The FOs have gone out there for all the right reasons - experience, money etc... and fair play to them. It is hard work, and it is demanding, but equally the rewards are worth it. I would love more money though to come back to the FOs and Capts who were out there.
9/ They pray on our fear. Redundancies. Fleet reductions. FDM monitoring and disciplinary action due to small errors.
10/ Pooling the wool over our eyes. Jim French's pay review, wasn't a pay review. It was giving him a new contract. That 2% pay rise... well that included your annual increments so that makes 0.3%, we've got no plans to float... oh dear, look what happened now, there are no plans to replace the Dash...
... I could go on.
My point is that quite simply, rather than point your fingers at your colleagues and end up shouting at each other over issues that are fundamental to CRM (each others comfort zone), then really, we should be getting more pissed off with the company for the fact that they treat us like we still have dummies in our mouth.