Schnurman: American Airlines pilots need a reality check

[frontline]

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/1250570.html

Saw this in the Star Telegram this week. It's pretty provocative stuff.

I don't agree with all of it (especially the "from another planet" crap) but he does make some points about companies not being able to survive without low fixed costs. I also think he's right about the pilots strike talk giving organized labor a bad name.

 

[FrequentFlierCA]

Very good article. I didn't know the pilots wanted Super Bowl Sunday as a paid holiday. That's just one more ridiculous item on their long list of demands. It's about time the press started pointing out this idiocy. Unemployment where I live is over 10%. Is that how the pilots want this to end?

 

[Winglet]

Very good article. I didn't know the pilots wanted Super Bowl Sunday as a paid holiday. That's just one more ridiculous item on their long list of demands. It's about time the press started pointing out this idiocy. Unemployment where I live is over 10%. Is that how the pilots want this to end?

Taking it to bankruptcy is ok with me. But Arpey isn't going to get a BK-class pilot contract unless he wants to kill his own fat bonuses and shareholder value as well. Bring it on.

 

[Mach85ER]

I saw where his paper is listed as one of the top ten papers likely to fail.

I'd ask him a few questions:

1. Would Mitchell take a 50% paycut beacause his editors and owners said it needed that to survive?

2. What would Mitchell think if these same lack of talent clowns had their paper rank near last in nearly every category of customer satisfaction, yet rewarded themselves with 6 figure bonuses because they compared themselves to a select group of failing newspapers?

3. As well as his paycut would Mitchell have his yearly vacation time slashed in half?

4. Would Mitchell work an amount equal to one additional month per year because his same managers said they needed it?

5. Finally, would Mitchell and another writer work together with an armed individual standing behind them, who would at minimum, wound both if they made a rather simple mistake, but one that was designated as a life or death safety item?

6. Would Mitchell accept mandatory shifts from 9pm to 5 am, as well as work most weekends, along with Christmas morning, writing mundane editorials?


Mitchell would run for the exits, as well as have no comment on the questions above since his failing newspaper needs the ad revenue from a local corporation.

If he would, then I'd say, "welcome to my world Mitch' boy"

 

[FA Mikey]

If you told people they would be making a 6 figure income, with a multi million dollar retirement and only having to work 12 to 15 days of the month. My guess is most people would all answer yes to your questions.

 

[tfc767]

If those same people making 6 figure incomes were asked to take 30% pay cuts (in some cases a lot more) to save the company while that same company paid out bonuses to top execs for three years in a row, I'd say they'd vote NO to everything.

It's all perspective, folks. Airline pilots are not paid what they're worth - they're paid what they negotiate. Same for management. However, I'll say this: You want Sully at the controls for the next emergency, they're gonna have to pay up for that experience. Otherwise, you'll be taking your chances with some spikey haired youth hired with minimal experience to figure out how to deal with who knows what. You get what you pay for. The airline piloting profession has gone down the tubes, and it's just a matter of time before experience won't be much of a factor anymore (it's already happened at the regionals... 300 hour newhires at Eagle.) You want professionals up there, pay up.

Super Bowl Sunday, yeah it's laughable, and some consider ridiculous. But how about the company's offer to the pilots that "you can work more days a month, there's your pay raise?" That's just as laughable.

 

[FA Mikey]

It's all perspective, folks. Airline pilots are not paid what they're worth - they're paid what they negotiate. Same for management. However, I'll say this: You want Sully at the controls for the next emergency, they're gonna have to pay up for that experience.

Sully is there even after the pay cuts and the pension cuts. I dont think you will see a mass migration away or a less qualified pool of people who want the job. Right now you have guys making 1/2 as much at jet blue and spirit and some of the other regionals.

 

[Boomer]

Blah, Blah, Blah...

Schnurman and his cohorts were absent/noticeably silent when AA Labor contracts were gutted while AA Execs took hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses without ratification or notification to those voting on the paycuts. The cry of screw labor contracts but honor ours was absent from the headlines.

Many on this board have questioned why their respective Unions failed to negotiate more of an upside during the concessions negotiations. Often, the various labor Unions have been derided by some of the posters for the inability to articulate, in contract language, what they desired. Now these same individuals deride the specificity of the demands.

What we are seeing in US INDUSTRY at large was writ large by the airline executives over the past twenty years. Agree to contracts that are unsustainable; knowing that bankruptcy will jettison the labor end leaving management whole.

Congratulations TWU, you first led the airline industry down only to have other American Industries learn how to deleverage all American Industries through the trail you blaized on the backs of the workers that make it all possible.

 

[TIME FOR CHANGE]

It is the management in corporate America that has been paid to much for too long. Regardless of the industry. Lets all start them at a 10 percent max over the union employee. That should level the playing field. Not interested then quit. With all the corporate disasters as of late I dont think we can do any worse.

 

[Mach85ER]

Sully is there even after the pay cuts and the pension cuts. I dont think you will see a mass migration away or a less qualified pool of people who want the job. Right now you have guys making 1/2 as much at jet blue and spirit and some of the other regionals.

Mikey,

It takes awhile to shut off the pipeline. You can be assured that the caliber is dropping, and the regionals are feeling it now. It will extend to the major airlines. The LCC effect on the pilots is that most, if not all, went to work for those payrates in the hope of being the next Southwest. As Sully has said, and as has nearly every other pilot I know, we all wouldn't recommend the career to our children.

If you told people they would be making a 6 figure income, with a multi million dollar retirement and only having to work 12 to 15 days of the month. My guess is most people would all answer yes to your questions.

I told people I know the same thing 25 years ago. And that was at payrates worth double of what they are now. Not many wanted to ride along all night over the mountains at night, in icing conditions in a single engine airplane. Many others didn't want to risk 10 years of their lives in the military along with the same/more risk of dying as any other pilot who reached a level of adequate experience. They all seem to want my paycheck now though. I see their point, I want to be like one of those Nip Tuck PS Surgeons. Can I just skip all the work and just collect the check? 🙄


I thought even you might have the sense to know that the average crew bidlsheet puts someone away from home an average of 60 hours a week.

We are straying from my question. is Mitchell willing to pitch in to help his paper?

 

[FA Mikey]

10% over a union worker seems a but harsh, but you are on the right track. How about a multiple against the lowest paid hourly worker in the company.


Strengthening unions and expanding them will go a long way to reining in over bloated executive compensation, along with rebuilding the middle class. The real blood and sweat of this country. The middle class worker, warrior, consumer, and true back bone of the economy.

 

[AAflygirl]

Taking it to bankruptcy is ok with me. But Arpey isn't going to get a BK-class pilot contract unless he wants to kill his own fat bonuses and shareholder value as well. Bring it on.

This mentality doesn't make sense to me. If Arpey said it's bk or bk-like wage concessions, wouldn't it still be more advantageous to go the non-bk route in order to preserve pensions and stock value (assuming you have some in your 401k)?

I think bankruptcy sounds like the second worst alternative (worst being going out of business.) We would lose any control over wages as the courts would gut all contracts, share value lost (I have some still!) and pensions would roll to the government. As if they can afford it!

 

[heckle and jyde]

If you told people they would be making a 6 figure income, with a multi million dollar retirement and only having to work 12 to 15 days of the month. My guess is most people would all answer yes to your questions.

who do they think they are? baseball players

 

[FA Mikey]

No, just the AA pilots.

 

[Mach85ER]

No, just the AA pilots.

I wouldn't throw stones Mikey.

The pilot's have one thing in common with ballplayers, and that's the years of experience it takes to be get to top of a career. I would be more concerned about your career. Your group has more in common with the typical UAW worker in terms of the actual requirements and training to do a certain job. For many UAW workers, that may be a couple of weeks or less.

Just as we face the same negative view regarding the senior CA flying 78 hour/9 day months to PVG, your group may also get little sympathy if AA posts the salary of a senior FA doing 12 days a month/100 hours to PVG. "$60 Grand to work 25 hours a week serving Cokes!!, I could do that job with 2 weeks of training!!!Who do these people think they are!!!!" (Not my thoughts)

We're in the same boat once we're in the limelight