We already tried the no seniority upgrade approach with freighter commands. Anyone in the company could do a freighter command, no seniority there but you took a 50% pay cut to do it.
Originally Posted by
Curtain rod
OK, so call it 15-30% pay cut (except much more if going from HKG base FO to based F CN). So we were in contract compliance over 1% pay, but 15-30% for a lower paying, higher rank position is ok, yeah?
Wrong. Why do people always think our freighter skippers took a paycut for a command? F CN scale is typically 15% less than than B-scale CN scales, but these guys were not current B-scale commanders, they were FOs when they went for it. Almost everyone who took a based freighter command was a based B-scale (or even F-scale) FO, so by taking a command they obtained a substantial
raise, as freighter command scales were typically 15%
higher than B-scale FO on same base (and a heck of a lot higher than F-scale FO).
The real cruncher, though, was that you started accumulating command paypoints immediately, so if you were an FCN for say six years before becoming eligible for pax command, you then slid directly over to B-scale command year six. Do the math. Financially, a no-brainer if you were always planning to stay on a base.
The downsides were the high fail rate on the course, and subsequent crap rostering, but in exchange for
much more money over the course of your career and a command directly on a base. And if the guys who did not go for it are honest with themselves, usually it was because of the previously mentioned drawbacks or because they preferred to come to HKG and start collecting houses (and good for them).
But the most important aspect, as pointed out by Silberfuchs, is that freighter commands were AOA instigated and sanctioned (for something like ten years). Far from being banned, they were our union's idea, whether some folks liked it or not.
Accepting a training position right now is precisely the opposite.