Originally Posted by
Curtain rod
How nice of you to encourage unilateral contract changes detrimental to the employees' careers, family life, and in this case, their actual probability of remaining alive. And by imposing a "policy" just like that - how convenient. Sound familiar?
Military pilots sign away many years of their lives in exchange for pilot training. For most, those many years (much longer than any other officers' contractual commitment in most countries, as far as I know) also comes with the very real risk of not being alive at the end (due to things like the more dangerous flying environment/style (high speed/low level/formation/extreme maneuvering/flying towards each other/etc.), the high performance/risky flying, and the high likelihood of real combat action - which also comes with the risk of imprisonment and/or torture and/or execution, etc.).
Military pilots also sign away their rights to decide where they and their family members will live, when they move, which type of work and flying they will do, which also affects the spouses' ability to work/earn/progress/be happy, kids' childhoods and educations, as well affecting everything else for everyone, from tv to sports to groceries to climate to friendships to - everything.
With most military pilots locked in at a young age to a lengthy, very binding contract, with severe penalties for breaking their contracts (serious imprisonment) and a multitude of additional rules, regulations and laws (military laws) long before they even complete flying/operation training (not knowing if they will fly, or what they will fly - which is much, much more significant to their work/family/futures/lifestyles/survival than whether they are 777/747/A50/etc. pilots - they have not just honored/honoured their side of the agreement, they have done so while graciously serving their countries, at great personal risk and sacrifice by them and their families, even with the "cool stuff" included for some (many get no cool stuff at all, just a raw deal).
How about just having both sides stick to the contract, and if one side needs help from the other side, then they can negotiate/offer an improvement instead of just unilaterally imposing changes that suit them at the moment, just because they think they can get away with it and it is cheaper. Sound familiar?
If the military demonstrates that it will cancel contracts unilaterally and simply impose far-reaching changes that are detrimental to the careers, lifestyles, livelihoods, families, futures and actual lives of its pilots (sound familiar?) then they can expect to have a real hard time getting the best candidates to apply, much less agree to join. This means that the military tradition and desire to select and recruit the best, top notch, top choice and top quality applicants from highly motivated, well educated, intelligent, desirable pools of wannabes with the most potential will still happen, but the new "top" picks will be seriously different in the new, degraded pool of wannabes consisting of a new, much lower overall quality of recruits going forward, forever. Sound familiar?
If the military improves the deal to the point where current pilots want to stay, then the problem will self-correct. For example, how many F-15 pilots would stay (vs. be racing to get their airline seniority number) if the military paid them $1M USD per year to stay after their contractual requirement, and guaranteed them $250K/year in retirement at some point after that? Too much/not enough? Then the market will determine the necessary numbers. The military could also allow its pilots to get hired at airlines, then assist and compensate those airlines (with $$$) and its pilots for resuming military service on short extensions while maintaining their airline seniority (something which already happens in the US to a great extent via the reserves/ANG, but could be better organized/formalized/etc.). Or the military could do nothing to retain pilots, or they could threaten/action contractual changes to benefit only their side, or they could continue to expect extreme service from their pilots while treating them as easily disposable/replaceable employees, and then they would get nowhere fixing their problem they need to solve. Sound familiar?
The mutually agreeable solution is mostly quite simple in most cases. But, it costs a lot of money to attract and retain top quality pilots, particularly the most valuable ones: the older/longer serving/most experienced/most qualified ones...unless they just don't want to attract and retain those pilots anymore - although that choice also comes with a very high, often (but not always) intangible cost too. Sound familiar?