Pilot Internships, and why I won't work for free.

[Firebird2XC]

Gear slinging in a simulator is hardly considered 'work'

It's time spent furthering a business which requires a trained pilot exercising his or her skills. That, as far as most employment scenarios are concerned, is 'work'.

See my thread on "paying dues" and "dumb hooah". It doesn't have to be back-breaking, sweat inducing labor to be work, you know.

 

[Firebird2XC]

SimCom right?

Yeah, heard about it. . . at least the other large contract training provider pays their part-time seat fillers.

Glad to see you saw the light in that program though.

Believe it or not, your time is valuable. Be compensated for it.

No, it wasn't SimCom. I'm declining to name the company because I think that despite their practice of using the hungry, they're a good company.

 

[tonyw]

Gear slinging in a simulator is hardly considered 'work'

Baloney.

Someone is charging a customer for the time in the simulator. The person sitting in the right seat is needed in order for that to happen.

That means the company should be paying for that person to sit in the right seat. I don't care if they're getting minimum wage. They need to be paid for it.

Period.

I don't understand what makes the no pay, no work concept so hard for some people to grasp.

Well, most of them are now doing other things with their lives — things that don't involve flying airplanes for a living.

If they weren't getting paid to fly, then they weren't flying airplanes for a living. Unless things have changed, hours in a log book don't count when you go to the grocery store to buy food and you can't pay the mortgage with them.

I can't believe that people just don't see this. People, if you're working for free, YOU ARE BEING USED. THEY ARE SHAFTING YOU!

And you gladly lube up and smile and take it. Hell, man, I'd say you're not even getting to lube up first.

 

[surreal1221]

No, it wasn't SimCom. I'm declining to name the company because I think that despite their practice of using the hungry, they're a good company.

I always get theses two companies mixed up. Both start with an S and offer contract training services.

Being a good company is all relative.

 

[Nihon_Ni]

I don't see how this is working for free. I get that the payment details of the OP's situation are sketchy, but the basic premise of working in a simulator for a certain numbers of hours that will be compensated for by a type rating seems like working for payment to me. The fact that it isn't compensated in cash doesn't change the equation. How is this different than the kid who works at an FBO washing airplanes and takes payment in the form of flight time? Is he working for free too?
<O</O
Furthermore, I don’t get the point about how this keeps instructors out of work. Instructors being laid off and an opening for a lower-level job seem to be apples and oranges. I understand that an instructor can perform the duties of an SIC because of his knowledge of the subject airplane, but itsn't it a bit overkill to hire an instrutor for those duties? When I go to the hospital, a suregon could take my vitals and give me injections, but those jobs are normally relegated to a nurse practitioner who is paid a compensorary wage for those duties while a suregon is paid a compensorary wage for surgical skills. Why should a suregon be paid a surgical wage for doing nurse practitioner skills?

<O</OWhy should this company be restricted from hiring SICs, secretarys, janators, etc. simply because a higher paid job position (instructor) is overstaffed and some of them are currently laid off? I can see offering the instructor the same payrate as the SIC interns, but why should the company be forced to pay instructors instructor-pay when they are doing SIC intern-work? It’s not like I don’t care about the guys who are out of work, but why should the company be forced to overpay for an employee they need?<O</O

 

[gatorbuc99]

I can't believe that people just don't see this. People, if you're working for free, YOU ARE BEING USED. THEY ARE SHAFTING YOU!

Couldn't agree more. Not just you, but everyone behind you, everyone in front of you. Not just this situation, but in general people taking jobs in the industry for much lower pay than they should's disheartening.

 

[PGT]

Yea, we can say no and stand up but there is always going to be some rat that comes in and does the job instead of you or me. It's the same kid that saw an ad in the FBO to fly a 182 for free and said "awesome" and the same kid that heard about a 91 light-twin gig said "I'll fly him for free, I just want the time." The same kid was probably just happy to see a jet and didn't care about the pay.

There is nothing we can do to improve our salaries or work conditions with people like that waiting to jump in and do things for less.

 

[Crockrocket94]

Gear slinging in a simulator is hardly considered 'work'

You obviously have never done alot of gear slinging in a simulator... it's the busiest seat in the house.

 

[FlyChicaga]

If it hadn't been for my airline internship in college, I'd probably be a furloughed regional FO, working as a part-time instructor and full-time at Home Depot. Instead, I'm going on my fifth year at my current company, and I just passed my six year anniversary in the airlines. To me, spending a semester working for airline management allowed me to fulfill a dream, and make some amazing friendships in the process.

I'm somewhat on the fence about this whole situation. I highly believe in internships, but I also don't like the idea of doing someone's job for free when they're laid off. I think if our economic environment was different, this would be a non-issue.

My only regret is not doing an internship at a major airline. I was extremely jealous of a friend who was able to do the cooperative at UPS, after hearing all his stories.

 

[texas_pilot]

I'm not really sure what the costs to the customer were at this vender.
I'm assuming that the program was a set price, and the cost incurred by the company varied. There may or may not have been incentives to fill both seats.

Let's just follow the almighty buck then.
It sounds like the customer should've been able to bring an SIC along free gratis- it's their money paying the bill, if anybody deserves the extra tyoe rating, it's them.