Shortage! Wages! It's really happening this time! - The Atlantic

I think maintaining a positive attitude while also putting up a fight for a fair starting wage is the best combination. Yes, it is what you make it but accepting flat out insulting less than McDonalds wages with the excuse that "herp derp my jerb is fun" is not the way to go. Less than 20k a year to do something most people on the planet can't do is not paying your dues, it's rape.

Stay happy, keep up the good fight and maybe, just maybe, the next generation will have it a little easier.
 
TWP said:
I think maintaining a positive attitude while also putting up a fight for a fair starting wage is the best combination. Yes, it is what you make it but accepting flat out insulting less than McDonalds wages with the excuse that "herp derp my jerb is fun" is not the way to go. Less than 20k a year to do something most people on the planet can't do is not paying your dues, it's rape.

Stay happy, keep up the good fight and maybe, just maybe, the next generation will have it a little easier.
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I agree 110%. It absolutely is rape, and something I've fought for quite a while. I fought it for a number of years, but unfortunately I finally gave in and joined the regional crowd. I spent a few years flying a single turbine that got me great experience, and a comfortable paycheck, but even with a few thousands hours nobody will touch me since I lack hours in my multi column. My career progression seemed to just stop. So now I'm just finishing up training at a regional, and without a savings account there is no way I'd be able to survive this upcoming year. I know many people who have been in my shoes and got lucky, right place right time sort of thing who never had to go airline. I never was able to do that, so I finally made a decision to join the airline world and get some 121 experience.

For the amount of time and training I'm doing, I just laugh now when I think how much I'm getting paid. The kick in the teeth for me was sitting in indoc about a month ago, listening to an asst. chief pilot answer a pay increase related question, and his words to the class were, "Well I'm looking around the room, it's standing room only with all of you here, so no, as long as we keep filling classes pay will not change."
 
Remember the movie War Games, with the pre-annoying you out of your mind Matthew Broderick?



They've got the airplanes, they've got people who are willing to work for less than they'd get flipping burgers, and they're going to keep on doing it until they can't fill those classes.
 
Mark815 said:
I agree 110%. It absolutely is rape, and something I've fought for quite a while. I fought it for a number of years, but unfortunately I finally gave in and joined the regional crowd. I spent a few years flying a single turbine that got me great experience, and a comfortable paycheck, but even with a few thousands hours nobody will touch me since I lack hours in my multi column. My career progression seemed to just stop. So now I'm just finishing up training at a regional, and without a savings account there is no way I'd be able to survive this upcoming year. I know many people who have been in my shoes and got lucky, right place right time sort of thing who never had to go airline. I never was able to do that, so I finally made a decision to join the airline world and get some 121 experience.

For the amount of time and training I'm doing, I just laugh now when I think how much I'm getting paid. The kick in the teeth for me was sitting in indoc about a month ago, listening to an asst. chief pilot answer a pay increase related question, and his words to the class were, "Well I'm looking around the room, it's standing room only with all of you here, so no, as long as we keep filling classes pay will not change."
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Since the mass exodus from cfi to the regionals will not go away I think the best option is how people vote on contracts when they do come into the regionals. If your goal is the major airlines, the regional airlines are really your best option.

I used to be of the "refuse to work for the regionals" mindset, but it really seems like going the other route is much longer and arduous so people really have no other option.

If there was a mass refusal to work for that kind of pay things would change, but there will always be pilots who will undercut their peers and suffer through worse and worse pay the first year to fly jets. The pilot group is not as solid as it portrays itself to be and that is something to be worked on. If we really stuck up for each other, there wouldn't be 20k a year airline pilots.

Personally, I think the top out pay for FO's at most regionals should be the starting pay....
 
Boris Badenov said:
When did the Forum Police finally organize? And why am I not the Commandante?

Seriously, the guy doesn't think flying is a very good career. And he tells people. What's the problem?
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What @tonyw does is tell people he thinks aviation is a bad career. What this guy does is points fingers and plays the victim, because of his unhappiness he chooses to blame others. That's the problem.
 
I dunno, I suppose I haven't seen many of his other posts. But, I mean, my general default feeling is that people can say whatever they want. If it's not true, it won't stick.

Now, that said, I do agree that misery is most often a choice.
 
desertdog71 said:
Society teaches us not to be honest with each other and here we have somebody that feels bamboozled about the industry and that nobody was honest with him. My response is BOO effing HOO.

People have needs and place values on people that can deliver those needs. That is an undeniable fact of life. Now if you think you're not getting what you deserve, then change the person in the mirror and become a person worth more. This industry, life in general don't owe you a damn thing.

As Alec Baldwin says in Glengarry Glen Ross "If you wanna work here, CLOSE!"
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I like the ideas of gumption and tenacity. Like 'em a lot. And I try to live by the credo that the world is what one makes of it. However, it really isn't that bumper-sticker, self-help-soundbyte simple. And just as an aside, the point of that movie was to show the horrid brutality with which people treat each other. Baldwin's character was not meant to portray a role model to be emulated or exalted. His character was one more in the literary tradition of say, perhaps, Iago.
 
Yeah, very true, but you have to admit that that was one of the best • speeches in movie history. :)

"What's my name? F&*^ you, that's my name! You know why, Mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name!!"

That's just master class • right there. :D
 
Nobody is denying his freedom to say whatever.
Crop Duster said:
I like the ideas of gumption and tenacity. Like 'em a lot. And I try to live by the credo that the world is what one makes of it. However, it really isn't that bumper-sticker, self-help-soundbyte simple. And just as an aside, the point of that movie was to show the horrid brutality with which people treat each other. Baldwin's character was not meant to portray a role model to be emulated or exalted. His character was one more in the literary tradition of say, perhaps, Iago.
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I don't sense that you truly understood the the movie at all. That's to be expected though. Bitterness or motivation is a choice, so when mean old Alec Baldwin yells at you (doing a work on you aka coaches yelling) you have to make a choice. Take it personal, or get fired up. Why is Al Pachino not there? because he is out selling. Not hanging around the crew room complaining (funny how that works).
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Yeah, very true, but you have to admit that that was one of the best • speeches in movie history. :)

"What my name? F&*^ you, that's my name! You know why, Mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name!!"

That's just master class • right there. :D
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and this is exactly how life is. Nobody cares about anything except what you can do for them. Sell or GTFO.
 
desertdog71 said:
Nobody is denying his freedom to say whatever.

I don't sense that you truly understood the the movie at all. That's to be expected though. Bitterness or motivation is a choice, so when mean old Alec Baldwin yells at you (doing a work on you aka coaches yelling) you have to make a choice. Take it personal, or get fired up. Why is Al Pachino not there? because he is out selling. Not hanging around the crew room complaining (funny how that works).
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Eh, I don't think you really get the movie, either. The writer has talked quite a bit about it, so while you can certainly draw your own conclusions about it, his intent is pretty well known. He was basically attacking corporate America, and the sales culture of capitalism in particular. It's a brutal attack on the idea that the successful are given the tools to be even more successful (more of the best leads), while the guys who find themselves in a slump get a guarantee of even more failure (getting old useless leads). He highlights it even more by showing that the top producer gets a Cadillac, while the bottom guy gets fired. Not just less money. Fired.

Mamet wasn't glorifying this. He was attacking it.

As far as Pacino, he was written out of that scene because Mamet thought that the Roma character wouldn't have sat there and listened. He would have gotten up and walked out, which would have killed the pacing of the scene. There wasn't any intent to make it look like Roma was out selling and was some sort of "hero."
 
The leads are weak = excuses to marginalize why you fail. Mamet isn't the person you think he is, quite the opposite really.
 
desertdog71 said:
The leads are weak = excuses to marginalize why you fail. Mamet isn't the person you think he is, quite the opposite really.
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You should really do some more reading on Mamet's themes in the play and movie. From an interview: "The play concerns how business corrupts, how the hierarchical business system tends to corrupt. It becomes legitimate for those in power in the business world to act unethically. The effect on the little guy is that he turns to crime. And petty crime goes punished; major crimes go unpunished."
 
desertdog71 said:
Nobody is denying his freedom to say whatever.

I don't sense that you truly understood the the movie at all. That's to be expected though. Bitterness or motivation is a choice, so when mean old Alec Baldwin yells at you (doing a work on you aka coaches yelling) you have to make a choice. Take it personal, or get fired up. Why is Al Pachino not there? because he is out selling. Not hanging around the crew room complaining (funny how that works).
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Not that personally talking to the author makes my opinion correct. But I can relate, first hand, what the author's intentions were as he told them to me.
 
Fair enough.
It changes nothing about reality. Victim or victor, motivated or bitter, whine or work to change it. All choices.
 
desertdog71 said:
Fair enough.
It changes nothing about reality. Victim or victor, motivated or bitter, whine or work to change it. All choices.
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Like I said, I applaud and try to exemplify tenacity and gumption. And, believe me, I have little tolerance for whiners. But here, perhaps we have arrived at the genesis of the current schism in American politics. Applauding tenacity and gumption and self-reliance is not a defense for moral corruption. At some point that leads to you becoming the enemy. Yeah, we all want people to work hard, and to persevere... as long as the game is fair and as long as the struggle is just. Being tenacious and intransigent in the pursuit of moral/legal corruption is reprehensible, no? Personally internalizing the perverted ethos of the morally corrupted is, perhaps, the worst corruption of all. You are then not just wrong, but owned, while aiding and abetting in your ownership.
 
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