What exactly does the pilot of a modern airliner do?

[jbroey3]

Have I seen you on forums.Flightinfo Toad?

[miko2d]

beet1e -

Dinger - assuming everything is as you've said and it is impossible to have a government that would stay out of economic planning (health, safety, ecological and many other regulations by the government are perfectly compatible with a free matket since they do not preference certain group and they do not change often) - why do you think that throwing union into the mix helps any?
 Unions bosses will be the same scoundrels that other institutions have - nothing special about the unions tp prevent that.
 Unions do not care in the least about the customers or people left unemployed by their policies.
 Union leaders do not always care even about their own members.

 Unions cannot exist/function for long without capitalist monopoly - so they are a major defender of monopoly and help lobby government for it alongside with the capitalists.

 Free marked does not exist, that's true. It does not mean it cannot exist.


Incorrect. The COMPANY can hire you.. they can hire whoever they want. They must pay you the rates agreed upon in negotiation with the pilots representatives after your first year.

 What if I am less attractive to an employer but really want to get the job and prove my worth and willing to sacrifice - say an ugly girl striving to be a salesperson or a programmer with not so-fluent English? I can lower the risk and increase attraction for an employer by lowering my price - but if he is forced to pay high price anyway, why would he care to give me a chance rather than go with more "suitable" candidate?
 The "first year" rule specific in airline industry does not change the situation that much.

Again: the company and the union mutually agree upon rates in negotiation.

 After the company is blackmailed by a threat of a strike.

1. Unions don't deprive anyone of a job. Pilot needs are determined by management.

 Of course they do - in order to keep price up you must limit suppy.
 Employer stops hiring once cost of an employee exceeds his  marginal utility. There may be plenty of people willing to work for less but if the employer is not allowed to pay less, he would lose money on any new hiree even if he is "free" to do so.

One of the biggest problems in the industry is overcapacity

 I bet that if the prices were cut, the planes would be fuller. In order to cut prices you cut expences - and salaries is one of them.


 miko

[miko2d]

Thrawn: You mean all the super benevolent corpoations won't just pocket the profits??  But pass it on to the consumers??

 As the products get cheaper to build/services to produce - for whatever reason, cheaper materials, labor, better technology - they get cheaper and increase in quality.

 Look around you - microprocessors, computers, food, drugs, etc. - everything gets cheaper every year. How come the companies don't just pocket the profits?
 You can't be so blind not to see competition all around you driving the prices down.

 miko

[whgates3]

Originally posted by miko2d
Look around you - microprocessors, computers, food, drugs, etc. - everything gets cheaper every year. How come the companies don't just pocket the profits?

food isnt getting any cheaper.
drugs only get cheap when the drug patent expires, until then the manufacturer just pockets the profits.
microprocessors & computers are only cheaper when they're obsolecent. top end models are as expensive as they ever were.

[miko2d]

whgates3: food isnt getting any cheaper.

 There is a huge load of BS in this single statement.

 First. Is it getting cheaper to produce? Most foods are produced by mature technology. The main expence are fuel, electricity, labor and fertilisers. Neither of those get cheaper, so why would this group of foods get cheaper.

 Second, you know very well that foods price support is a government policy. Just recently a supermarlet chain got sued for selling the milk too cheap. When government artificially mandates higher food prices in order to keep producers/farmers in business, you are barking up the wrong tree when you blame the free market for that.

 Third. Our agriculture is protected from competition. We could buy food much cheaper from 3rd world countries - thus providing them with vital income as well as benafitting our consumers and using freed human labor for more productive pursuits our high-tech economy could provide. Same goes for Europe. Same as (2) - no free market.

 Fourth, where there is a progress - like the GM seeds not requiring expensive labor and pesticides/herbicides - food does get cheaper. That is why stores and food chains buy those GM grains despite all the bad publicity. So they must be cheaper, otherwise why would they bother. Now you can claim that it's those food chains and supermarkets who are pocketing the difference - McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's etc. - but that would be a lie. Their prices do go down or quantity goes up or both - especially after inflation.


drugs only get cheap when the drug patent expires, until then the manufacturer just pockets the profits.

 You are plain lying again. Drug industry's risk-adjusted return on investment is not notably higher - if not lower - than economy's average. Just check the financial numbers. Intel has higher margins than drug manufacturers, same is true for many other companies/industries. Drug companies have profits but they also have a lot of expense - mostly on  research.
 If for some reason drugs got more profitable, why would not that cause huge inflow of capital, opening more businesses, increase in competition and drop of prices? Exactly what happened with computer manufacturing, telecom, wireles, etc. just recently.

microprocessors & computers are only cheaper when they're obsolecent. top end models are as expensive as they ever were.

 That's pure BS too, not only do top end models get cheaper all the rime, increase in quality is really the same as decrease in price.
 Your simplistic mind may count processors as "thingies with legs" and as long as you have one, you do not care what they are capable of.
 But people who need those processors for something count in instructions per second per dollar, megabytes of memory per dollar, gigabytes of disk space per dollar - all those get less expensive.

 miko

[Toad]

Originally posted by miko2d
After the company is blackmailed by a threat of a strike.

That pretty much says it all. Enjoy the thread.

Too bad the good old days of "no unions" are past.

Because we could still have the 12 hour work day like we did in the 1820's. That darn strike for the 8 hour day in 1886 was the beginning of ruination.

1900 was great too. Approximately two million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States; that could work again! We could put them little basteegees to work!

And we could have blocked safety exits like they had at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911.

And a 52 hour work week like they had in Lawrence, Mass in 1912.

Why should anyone get overtime pay either? Congress with the support of those Evil Unions passed the Fair Labor Standards Act ni 1938. Now those lazy SOBs had a maximum workweek without overtime at 44 hours. The act also established a minimum wage and a ban on child labor. The injustice of it all!

Worker's Compensation...... retirement and health plans......health and safety regulations on the job.

That stuff is all the fault of those nasty UNIONS. Why, without them, everything could still be like the "good old days".

Because you can d*mn sure make book on the fact that "managment" didn't give up a single one of those without a bloody (literally in many instances) fight and would take them back as fast as they could if given the chance.

Oh, yeah... one other thing.

I bet that if the prices were cut, the planes would be fuller.

Check the Air Transport Association industry sight. They're saying fares are the lowest they've been in many years and there's still overcapacity.

Now, I'm out of here. The Pollyanna thinking that Unions aren't necessary and that management has any sort of concern for the worker other than to use him like a Kleenex is beyond my ken.

Sorry. Good luck returning to the "good old days".