What do you guys feel about the "Fast Food Strike"?
I feel everyone deserves a living wage that they are willing to work for. You can specify work how you want, but showing up on time and doing the best you can for the time you belong to the company seems to be a fair trade to me for adequate compensation. We all have different ideas on "adequate" but no one should have to apply for food stamps who flies an airplane. Not instructing, not at the regional level, just shouldn't happen. But it is, it will and that will continue.
"So don't take the job, stop slitting your throat and everyone else's". Not so fast. How could you not take a job offered to you that is what you want to do? In your chosen field? Something you might have wanted to do, perhaps since you were small? That you've sacrificed to get to by whatever means. For some it's 100k in debt and a BS from a well known school. For others it's a second career from an industry that might have paid better. And in this industry, where time( and timing) is everything, who wouldn't jump at the chance to fly "even a turboprop" to get experience, even for •ey pay, get time and keep going?
Most fast food workers didn't put hours of time and thousands of dollars into a fast food "career". If you have a degree and are working there to pay bills until you find a job in your field, OK. Hell, if you aspire to be a Mickey D's manager so you can become a franchisee one day or at least go up their corporate ladder, I understand it.
But $15 an hour to be a fry cook or whatever with a HS diploma or GED when a regional pilot will make less than that AFTER years of school, military service,CFI, (insert your time building choice here) just makes me cringe. It makes no sense to me, just like paying athletes millions.Or when local school districts have funding issues. they cut the Arts and such first, but the football field will get a 100k make over and the coach will be the highest paid faculty member.
I mean, if the lowlights of this article, the crash of Colgan 3407 and everything else done about low pay in the regional air carriers, haven't done anything, what will? No one wants to pay what it costs to go places in airplanes anymore and that won't change. You can't stop people from taking jobs they want to have for low pay. And the airlines seem to have us all right where they want us. And that doesn't seem to change either, except there will be a shortage of pilots at some point. Wait. No. Maybe? No, but. Yes. No ??????