The Cankerous Cartel
These so-called recruiting agencies effectively operate as a cartel, which collude and conspire to keep our terms and conditions permanently suppressed. They profit handsomely through the exploitation of our professional licences and experience, gained over decades in many cases and always at great expense and personal sacrifice.
They act as unqualified middle men between us and our employers. Not only this, but they seek to indemnify themselves against what is, in fact, their responsibility for taxation, social and pension obligations by insisting that you, the pilot asset, establish bogus corporate structures, many of which are in flagrant disregard of the fiduciary responsibilities of company directors, or push you into so-called "umbrella companies" who charge you an exhorbidant fee in the ludicrous attempt to legitimise your relationship with the tax office. Why on earth do we all put up with it?
Ask what you think you're worth, after the family and personal sacrifice that goes into getting qualified. The vast sums on training costs. The years of lost income whilst you seek initial employment. Putting your licence and livelihood on the line three times annually till you retire with no pension provided. What's all that worth to you and your families? When's the last time you even met an agency representative face to face? Or saw one in the simulator or the AME doctors office. Ever wondered why the same minimal amounts are on offer, year after year regardless of aircraft type or experience, despite this being the time of greatest experienced pilot shortage of anytime in the history of aviation?
I advise all pilots to seek your own relationship with any prospective employers. If you're handcuffed into using an agency with absolutely no alternative, at least use one of the precious few respectable ones, and in EVERY case, ask them for a statement in writing of what monthly fee they receive for delivering you, a qualified licensed professional, to the door of an airline who should be doing it themselves. You will be staggered to learn how much they suck out of you for doing, in essence, nothing. This is YOUR money. If you willingly give it away to these aviation leaches, more fool you.
These agencies take a huge percentage for the length of your contract in return for doing nothing.
Nice work if you can get it.
This money by rights is yours. If these recruitment agency parasites were compelled to reveal how much they're making out of us, several things would happen. Our salaries would rise, our terms and conditions would improve, and we deluded trusting idiots that have been thinking these recruiting agencies have been acting in our best interests all these years, would observe with pleasure these wicked industrial tapeworms, a cancer on our profession, slowly vanish from the earth.