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Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

virgin.com

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Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#71

Post by yid »

spiantino wrote: post #62
yid wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a vapid comment. GP is perfectly within his rights to gripe about people performing a stressful job admirably while receiving less money than they deserve. Saying "start your own airline" hardly advances the conversation. As a counterpoint, you could have linked to median wages for all flight attendants and pointed out a systemic issue.

While I don't think it was presented as such, the "start your own airline" comment is, to me, the correct response to "people aren't being paid what they deserve". It turns out we are unlikely to agree as to what people deserve to be paid for their jobs, so we have decided the most fair thing to do is rely on labor markets and competition.

I'm sorry, that's still as vapid as saying "you don't like Google search? Well, build your own search engine..."

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#72

Post by [deleted] »

wtvanhest wrote: post #70

This is an analysis of the negotiation and everything needs to be said to understand the situation. In almost every airline negotiation with pilots, airline management has a far greater position in the negotiation, except in the case of Virgin where the pilots probably still have a worse position, but a much more equal playing field! Here is why: There is something that is EXTREMELY important to understand about the…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#73

Post by [deleted] »

wtvanhest wrote: post #70

This is an analysis of the negotiation and everything needs to be said to understand the situation. In almost every airline negotiation with pilots, airline management has a far greater position in the negotiation, except in the case of Virgin where the pilots probably still have a worse position, but a much more equal playing field! Here is why: There is something that is EXTREMELY important to understand about the…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#74

Post by huhtenberg »

joezydeco wrote: post #4

Why do my teeth grind whenever a CEO says "I know you're gonna be mad about salary cutbacks but, just to remind you, I'm not taking a salary."

Because you haven't read a couple of paragraphs further?

> Since Singapore Airlines bought into the company 10 years ago both of us have invested more money into the airline than we’ve taken out

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#75

Post by dasil003 »

swaits wrote: post #50
smiler wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that Virgin America is a completely independent company of Virgin Atlantic and that your experience seems to be mostly based on Virgin America. You talk about increased pay - the only way to increase staff pay would be to raise fares which customers don't want.

> the only way to increase staff pay would be to raise fares which customers don't want. This is far from "the only way". Southwest Airlines, for example, has excellent fares and excellent pay.

So Virgin should chuck their entire brand out the window and start herding people onto planes like cattle?

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#76

Post by dualogy »

yid wrote: post #71
spiantino wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't think it was presented as such, the "start your own airline" comment is, to me, the correct response to "people aren't being paid what they deserve". It turns out we are unlikely to agree as to what people deserve to be paid for their jobs, so we have decided the most fair thing to do is rely on labor markets and competition.

I'm sorry, that's still as vapid as saying "you don't like Google search? Well, build your own search engine..."

But exactly this line of thinking WAS needed for Larry+Sergej to DO "build their own search engine".

It may taste vapid to you or not -- but it's entirely valid.

In fact, Richard Branson at one point was so dissatisfied that he DID "build his own airline".

Your point was?

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#77

Post by swaits »

dasil003 wrote: post #75
swaits wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only way to increase staff pay would be to raise fares which customers don't want. This is far from "the only way". Southwest Airlines, for example, has excellent fares and excellent pay.

So Virgin should chuck their entire brand out the window and start herding people onto planes like cattle?

I said nothing of the sort. Virgin should do whatever is in its own best interest.

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#78

Post by Klinky »

estel wrote: post #69
Klinky wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic has itself also been forced into staff cost-cutting to survive the recession. It has already announced an imposed pay freeze for its staff. Board directors will not take bonuses this year. And the airline has filed to reduce its headcount by 600 staff - a cut of 7 per cent - though it says it has so far activated about 500 job cuts. It's a bit like saying "everyone gets cake, oh…

Why is making job cuts something only an evil corporation would do?

...again, I am not saying Virgin is inherently evil. The original post suggested that an employee on strike might go to Branson thinking he is a friend and not part of the "evil company". My point was that Richard Branson is the founder & the president of the company & has sided with management already in his open letter. That is what I meant by "he is the 'evil company'". I would hold little hope that a pilot is going to have much sway with Mr. Branson.

Now the conversation has veered off into if Branson is a friend of his employees. It sounds like he's partied with employees during the good times. But it's physically impossible for him to be a true personal friend with all his employees. While it's good to be on friendly terms with the founder/president/executive team, you must always keep in mind their position of power & what their motivations might be.

Good companies probably do layoff people. But there is this concept that if you fire someone on a friday it's better for them, or right before their weekend or you give a bunch of employees free travel bonuses while sacking 7% of them. It's slight of hand.

Re: Richard Branson's open letter to all Virgin pilots

#79

Post by niketdesai »

geuis wrote: post #7

I haven't heard anything about the pilot strike mentioned in the article. That aside, I have the following to say which is oriented more towards flight attendants than the pilots whom you don't normally interact with. Of any airline I have ever traveled on, the Virgin lines (Atlantic and America), have been my favorite. This ranges from the very basic things like more leg room than their competitors to wifi in the sk…

On the matter of paying a little extra for better service shouldn't we consider the option of "tipping" our flight attendants then?

I know this won't fly in general, especially outside the US where tipping is not nearly as customary, but this has been a method to offset low paying jobs where service level influences our overall spending.

I don't know what the lifestyle of a flight attendant is, but if the advancement of flight has reduced their positions to that of a McD's manager, blame us, the general public, because we've forced Airlines to optimize for scale transport.

As for Pilots...it gets tricky because they are very much vital. The seniority crap sucks but is understandable in a job market with a very finite requirement of personnel. To be a Senior Captain with a large carrier, like Singapore Airlines, means you'd be in the 200k+ salary club.

The number of short-hop vs long-leg flights is probably indicative of why there are so many junior level pilots paid less than senior level pilots paid more.

Furthermore, I'd say aircraft like the Airbus 380 compounds this problem by basically forcing a hub and spoke model where the large "carrier" aircraft can only be manned by senior pilots. If we had more direct-direct flights it would open up room for many semi-senior pilots and potentially distribute wages better.

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