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Old 26th Feb 2014, 20:15
  #18 (permalink)  
Oakape
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Western Pacific
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The seniority list is a real comfort when, through no fault of your own, you suddenly don't have a job - not!

Whether it be through redundancy or airline collapse, if you are in your late 40's or older, it is usually financially impossible to start at the bottom of the list at a new airline, unless you have done particularly well with your money over the years and/or have an excellent redundancy package (although, often the redundancy package isn't worth the paper its written on if the airline collapses).

So all the experience leaves the country as people just try to put food on the table for their families & pay the mortgage. Lives are thrown into turmoil & some families disintegrate.

Seniority is fine when you have stable, long term employment. Unfortunately, that seems to be something that has been lost forever these days when any company, no matter how large & successful, can go out of business almost overnight.

This is one of the few, if not the only, industries where movement to higher positions is almost guaranteed by a seniority list. Perhaps it is time to find another way, so as to allow people to move within the industry by merit, as circumstances dictate. Everyone else in the working world seems to cope without a seniority list.
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