Always interesting to watch the American labor movement eat itself. Depressing but interesting.
I find it more fascinating to watch corporations shit all over the Americans.
Why airlines tend to be unionized
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#22So why don't junior pilots form their own union? Wouldn't that introduce more competition into the labor market and equalize (or at least rationalize) pay between "junior" and "senior" pilots? Or is aviation one of those industries where working your way from the bottom is celebrated?
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#23Not sure I'm convinced about this point:
how can we explain a 19:1 pay differential..? The answer is to look at who controls the pilot's union: very senior pilots.
Why wouldn't the junior majority vote out the senior minority or leave the union?
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#24A pilot's job is one of the easiest to replace with a computer. It is already happening in the military. In fact, the only actual role of a pilot today is to take off and land the plane, the rest is auto-pilot. If the unions make it so hard to employ humans, it would only give incentive to further develop auto pilots, and the problem will solve itself.
Right. Except for those times when you need people like Captain Sully to deal with the crisis at hand.
Being a programmer, I wouldn't want to trust my life to a computer program with no human supervision.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#25A pilot's job is one of the easiest to replace with a computer. It is already happening in the military. In fact, the only actual role of a pilot today is to take off and land the plane, the rest is auto-pilot. If the unions make it so hard to employ humans, it would only give incentive to further develop auto pilots, and the problem will solve itself.
Sorry, but this is a very common misconception. Just like many people not familiar with programming think that anyone can make a great software product just by pointing and clicking in some GUI tool. The tools certainly help a lot and makes the job easier, but pilot-less passenger airplanes are still many years away.
And, knowing just how much can go wrong both with software and with flying, I know I'm not going to fly with such an airplane. Auto-pilot and auto-land systems today work well because they do a very narrowly defined thing with great precision, with the amount of software needed kept to a minimum. A software system that would be able to account for all that can go wrong when flying would have to be very complex and difficult to get defect free (and don't get me started on the idea of remote controlling passenger planes).
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#26A bit meta, but it's interesting to see how much this guy has reinvented himself over the years. Going from running the biggest, loudest, and most profitable software consulting firm in the world... to retiring to play with photography and airplanes... to junior pilot at a small airline. Some might say going from $MM/year CEO to $18k/year new guy would be a step down, but he seems to be genuinely enjoying the ride. I…
"Retiring" is an interesting way to describe it. He took VC money, didn't like VC control, got into a court battle. He then settled for millions with the VCs, while his partners got nothing out of the settlement (http://www.assureconsulting.com/articles/arsdigitahisone.sht...).
It's interesting to see him slightly back in the public eye as an aircraft nerd.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#27A bit meta, but it's interesting to see how much this guy has reinvented himself over the years. Going from running the biggest, loudest, and most profitable software consulting firm in the world... to retiring to play with photography and airplanes... to junior pilot at a small airline. Some might say going from $MM/year CEO to $18k/year new guy would be a step down, but he seems to be genuinely enjoying the ride. I…
"Retiring" is an interesting way to describe it. He took VC money, didn't like VC control, got into a court battle. He then settled for millions with the VCs, while his partners got nothing out of the settlement ( http://www.assureconsulting.com/articles/arsdigitahisone.sht... ). It's interesting to see him slightly back in the public eye as an aircraft nerd.
Especially as an interviewee on an NPR story about Groupon. If I remember correctly NPR made no mention of Greenspun as having founded a seminal social media web app, before there was language to describe it that way.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1293863...
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landing is typically done on autopilot these days; it is done manually to maintain a pilot's rating or for exceptional reasons.
...and under fair weather conditions. Under more adverse conditions will be done manually. It's fairly easy to tell a computer, "See that line (runway slope), follow it".
I think the autopilot follows a ILS beacon in. Isn't that why less flights are diverted in poor weather now?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=Autopilot
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#29"the FAA will not allow this because those replacement pilots, though competent with the airplane, do not have experience with the specific operating rules of the airline"
Then why don't the airlines standardize their operating rules?
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#30Airlines tend to be unionized because fifty years ago, every major industry in the US was unionized. The large-scale shifts in the American economy in the 1970s and 1980s (less manufacturing, more services) accompanied changes in law, regulations, and public opinion that made it harder to organize unions.
Senior pilots make more than junior pilots because back when the government set routes and fares, the airlines collected higher-than-market revenues, which they could share with the pilots. After deregulation, the industry was no longer so profitable, and the pilots’ union compromised by protecting its existing members’ salaries while letting new pilots make less.