allow me to clear up a few things - Here is how you live on $9,000 a month - you forgoe the 6 bedroom 5 bath house on the golf course and opt for the 4 bedroom 3 bath house a few blocks away. You opt for the Lexus instead of the Mercedes. You only hire one housekeeper as opposed to two. I would imagine the I could live rather nicely on $9,000 a month - even in Manhattan.
Please point to where this magic $9,000 a year statement came from as being "fair" pay for a flight attendant? I certainly didn't make it. You know, this topic is about Southwest airlines attendants who don't have their employees based in NYC. A Southwest flight attendant posted that a new hire pretty much makes $16K a year (before taxes). The only thing I take to task is this flippant use of the term "poverty level". It doesn't mean that this is a "fair wage", just that your starting wage is far more than "poverty level", whether you want to admit it or not. And...FWIW, those poverty numbers are for the 48 contiguous states - no "allowances" for those living in NYC or San Francisco. I guess our poverty folks are living large here in America's heartland, but believe it or not, there really ARE people who qualify as "poverty level" in those two cities as well. But I'll tell you what...e-mail me off line and we can arrange for you to stop off in KC on a day off. I'll meet you at the airport and then I'll take you where you can meet some folks who really are living on less than $9,000 a year. You can compare lifestyle notes. You can compare "apartments". You can compare clothing. You can compare meals. And then you can decide if your life is anywhere close to what there life is. Fly is welcome to join you. I have an idea that you'll leave feeling like you live like Donald Trump after meeting some of these folks.
Second - that dang old seniority system is precisely the reason that I do not work in a unionized organization. If I felt I was being screwed, I left for a better opportunity. No starting over at the bottom. And the odd thing was, if 30 years in the workplace, I haven't had an employer who was ever really screwing me over, so I really had no need for any kind of "protection".
Finally...why don't you and fly state what an FA should be paid. I never have, and I never will. So why don't you post a "fair" pay scale since you are eager to see what everyone else considers fair. From all I have read, you and fly would put the airline out of business in a hurry since you have both posted that it's just too tough to live on $108,000 per year ($9,000 a month). I will go so far as to admit that THAT may be a little too steep for starting pay.
:jerry:
