Michael Moore: Do You Want Airline Pilots to Be Working Two Jobs?
By Susie Madrak Monday Oct 12, 2009 5:00pmMichael Moore's pointing out something no one in the media seems to want to discuss: How little money the people who are flying commercial planes are getting paid. As he says, these are not the people you want working a second job:
We're on the descent from 20,000 feet in the air when the flight attendant leans over the elderly woman next to me and taps me on the shoulder.
"I'm listening to Lady Gaga," I say as I remove just one of the ear buds. I know not this Lady Gaga, but her performance last week on SNL was fascinating.
"The pilots would like to see you in the cockpit when we land," she says with a southern drawl.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No. They have something to show you." (The last time an employee of an airline wanted to show me something it was her written reprimand for eating an in-flight meal without paying for it. "Yes," she said, "we have to pay for our own meals on board now.")
The plane landed and I stepped into the cockpit. "Read this," the first officer said. He handed me a letter from the airline to him. It was headlined "LETTER OF CONCERN." It seems this poor fellow had taken three sick days in the past year. The letter was a warning not to take another one -- or else.
"Great," I said. "Just what I want -- you coming to work sick, flying me up in the air and asking to borrow the barf bag from my seatback pocket."
He then showed me his pay stub. He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.
I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.
"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop. You know, maybe it's just me, but the two occupations whose workers shouldn't be humpin' a second job are brain surgeons and airline pilots. Call me crazy.
I told them about how Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger (the pilot who safely landed the jet in the Hudson River) had testified in Congress that no pilot he knows wants any of their children to become a pilot. Pilots, he said, are completely demoralized. He spoke of how his pay has been cut 40% and his own pension eliminated. Most of the TV news didn't cover his remarks and the congressmen quickly forgot them. They just wanted him to play the role of "HERO," but he was on a more important mission. He's in my movie.
"I hadn't heard anywhere that this stuff about the airlines is in this new movie," the pilot said.
"No, you wouldn't," I replied. "The press likes to talk about me, not the movie."
And it's true. I've been surprised (and slightly annoyed) that, with all that's been written and talked about "Capitalism: A Love Story," very little attention has been paid the mind-blowing stuff in the film: pilots on food stamps, companies secretly taking out life insurance policies on employees and hoping they die young so the company can collect, judges getting kickbacks from the private prison industry for sending innocent people (kids) to be locked up. The profit motive -- it's a killer.
Especially when your pilot started his day at 6am working at the local Starbucks.
Login or Register to post comments.
Wage slaves, all over.
Whatever happened to the pilot's union? Gutted under bushco?
My mom said Moore's new movie is excellent, and she's pretty well-off and doesn't like to be bothered by "reality" movies most of the time.
I wonder what the union thinks about US pilots living in runway parking lots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8186690.stm
"no pilot he knows wants any of their children to become a pilot." -- add to that computer programmer.
I don't know anyone that is in the best condition even if they have jobs. My son is a cook for a chain restaurant and he was getting 2 weeks a year vacation time. They took away a week from him and the others. They get no sick leave. That is scary because when the child is sick he has to take her to the doctor and off a day or 2 with no pay and he pays over $300 a month for terrible health insurance. Yet he should feel lucky because he has a job. They cut the hours back on people. Honestly he could get help but he is to proud. My husband and I end up picking up his slack. Its like we are supporting 2 families. Its ruff on us. But you do what you got to do.
when a cook doesn't get sick leave, he goes to work sick and infects the customers. Who thinks this is a good idea?
I think most of us have no idea how sick they can be and still make it to work. I've seen a couple of cases that made it to the ICU where I work and it curled my hair (and I'm not the least bit squeamish). I think these situations could have placed patrons in serious health danger.
Lots of the major airlines "reorganized" under bankruptcy laws in the last few years.
I guess that's when pilots were stripped of their pensions and had their pay cut.
Bankruptcy laws - one card in the Corporate Get Out Of Jail Free deck.
Stole the entire contents of the pension fund and made it impossible for the pilots to really make a living. Mexico is the Petrie dish for many things we are seeing here now (read the Shck Doctrine!).
Funny that the pilots are making chump change and the CEOs of those companies are raking in millions. Shameful. It would make sense that the pilots get paid a good salary so that they won't have to take second jobs which impacts and probably impairs their ability to perform their flying responsibilities to the best of their abilities.
http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com
The righties thought Reagan was a saint for going after the Air Traffic Controllers.
And now all those air traffic controllers are coming up for retirement. So, now we'll have a shortage of qualified ATC's. Feel safe?
plus, the lack of labor regulation has turned that profession into such an insane pressure cooker, I sincerely doubt many people stay with an employer long enough to be vested in their retirement.
Maybe that was the plan of these conservatives from the get go.
They won't give a sh*t until one of their gulfstreams goes down. And then you will see how quickly regulation and safety reforms are needed.
... that the air traffic controller union initially supported Raygun in the 1980 election.
It seems that Carter's main sin was to assume that the American public, at large, were adults. Uncle Raygun proved him wrong.
That POS wanted to deregulate everything. Thanks to him we have an insane airline industry, basically no television news departments worth watching, a telephone industry in shambles, and on and on. He did more to dismantle the working apparatus of the United States than pretty much anyone before or after him, except of course Bush, who worked heartily to put the nails into the coffin he built.
Having grown up in California, I knew perfectly well what a weaselly and evil man Reagan was. I actually thought his candidacy was a joke at first. To this day I cannot believe the country was bamboozled into voting him into the White House.
I got this email from Michael Moore the other day and he sure raises some interesting questions.
I did a little online research about pilot salaries and, like everything else in the airlines, the pay schedules are quite complex.
Pay depends on how long the pilot has been flying, how many hours are guaranteed each month (if any), the hourly per diem rate, and the type of aircraft being flown (which makes sense when you think about it, but hadn't occurred to me before).
So a low-time pilot working for a regional carrier flying with no guaranteed hours and no per diem can indeed make very low wages. A more experienced pilot working for a national carrier can make $175K/year, which sounds pretty good to me.
What interests me is the wide variance in pay for doing essentially the same job. And in fact, many of these airplanes can virtually fly themselves these days, so it will be interesting to see what happens to the market for pilots in the future.
Here's an interesting page with comparisons between carriers:
http://www.aviationinterviews.com/compare_pay...
See "Air France 447" where the pitot tubes froze up, which caused the plane to lose all electronics and crash. This happened to other flights, but the experienced flight crews were able to handle it.
If you want to see what the brave new world looks like, look at Continental Connections 3407. Read the transcript and be very scared.
Flight is inherently dangerous, there are too many variables for it to be completely automated at the current state of the art. (Actually flying is fairly safe, it is getting back to the ground that is the hard part.)
if that guy had been working two jobs...
Luck Important, Says Pilot Of Jetliner Who Survived Crash Landing
Al Haynes, the pilot said luck is important, but the luck was that he wasn't working in a coffee joint on the days he wasn't flying.
I remember watching that. It rolled.
Yeah, I'd say luck was involved.
And in fact, many of these airplanes can virtually fly themselves these days
That is one of the biggest fallacies flying around about the airline industry. Read Patrick Smith's column "Ask the Pilot" over at Salon if you want to get the real skinny on what flying planes is all about.
"many of these airplanes can virtually fly themselves these days"
What???? Do some more research. That is a really ignorant statement.
There's an awful lot of FOs (First Officers) who are fully qualified captains, many of them on more than one sort of plane. But it's either work for FO pay, which sucks, or don't fly at all. There's more than one fully qualified airline pilot driving Greyhound buses right now, because the pay is better and so's the hours.
As for planes flying themselves - international 747s actually have regulations that pilots are not allowed to fly the plane during most of the flight, they take off, they land, they watch the controls in the middle bits. Thing is - computers are (a) stupid and (b) computers. Meaning, if something goes wrong, which happens more often than you would really be comfortable knowing about, there's better be a trained human being with a functional brain to fly the damned thing, like the Quantas A330 that suddenly dropped altitude last year, cuz the computer said it should - pilot who handled that did a damned good job - it could have so easily been another Air France disaster. (And computers flying planes is not really as smooth as you think, either.)
It isn't just that pilots are being squeezed by company CEOs making bazillions to their peanuts - it's simply everyone is broke these days, no one is flying as much as they used to, anywhere. Less people on planes, less pilots needed to fly them, the harder the squeeze. Air New Zealand cut back 200 jobs about six months ago, and the company is telling their pilots that anyone who wants to go take a five year contract with China, go, do it, come back in five years and you'll still have your place on the seniority. Otherwise, you're looking at more unpaid furloughs and more captains occupying the seat on the right side of the cockpit.
And working their days off at Starbucks...
Greyhound drivers are unionized.
If the pilot is making 2G more than I make for cleaning toilets, I will not be flying again.
No-one has spoken up about the pilots of planes which were taken over on 9/11. Were they working two jobs, and if so, how did this affect potential resistance to the terrorist hijackings?
Go see it as soon as possible! We can't begin to face the problem until we see what it really looks like. Congress should've fixed a lot of these things immediately; time is running out.
Congress will get to fixing those things promptly....Ubetcha
Single payer health care reform and equal rights amendment. Don't be so impatient, after all the ERA was only proposed 37 years ago.
Now that we have a nobel peace laureate in office AND we got to shoot at that b*tch the moon on the same day?
Murika #1, yeeeeehhhhaaaaaaa!
And universal health care by Teddy Roosevelt in 1900.
Hey, WHAT'S the rush?
Gays of both sexes will get full civil liberties in this administration. Straight women will not.
Proves, once again, that it's not what you know, it's who you screw, that gets you ahead in this world.
It's just my incredibly bad luck that I came down with the worst cold I've had in ten years just as this film was being released. I've been stuck in my house for the last two weeks, and frustrated as hell that I can't go see it. I just hope it's still in the theater when my body finally decides to stop torturing me and let me rejoin the world again!
Don't stress about the movie, it should be on DVD soon enough.
this might just cost some lives someday review the facts behind that commuter plane that went down near Buffalo. Crew fatigue was a definite factor in that one.
Read Sleep Thieves by Stanley Coren. It's incredible how many of the world's disasters in the last century can be laid right at the door of sleep deprivation. It's the plague of the modern world.
not the ones who fly over my place. Here's another thing: Do you want to fly on planes manufactured in South Carolina? Boeing is considering that, no unions and stuff. Somehow, I just don't think that makes for a highly skilled work force.
For years there have been stories about pilots qualifying for food stamps and other forms of welfare, only to be told by their
slave mastersbosses that if they apply for same, they'd be fired. This story is AT LEAST a decade old.I remember the days when pilots made a load of money, my mom had a story about being at some toffee nosed party and a pilot was there hating on Seattle, and my mom asked why do you live here? and he said I make 100,000 a year and I can buy houses where ever I want. that was the 60s, IIRC. That was 10x what my dad made (4 br tract houses were about 20,000)
If you want to see where going non-union and outsourcing gets you, google "Boeing 787 another delay." (It is actually worse than what you see in the media according to a friend who works there.) I'm really beginning to wonder about our country.
I don't need to look up anything about Boeing :) It's always in the local news.
To their credit Mitsu et al are unionized, or whatever they call it in the land of the rising sun. Just like them Euros have their factory committees, etc which mandate by law that a few percentage of voting board seats have to be reserved for employee representatives.
Frankly, at this rate Airbus will get their A350 out at the same time as Boeing starts deliveries of the 787. And the Euros already have an answer for every model in the boeing line up, plus the A380, for which Boeing has no equivalent.
For far too long management in this country has gotten away with blaming their blunders on unions. Because outside vendors can not only compete, but best a lot of our business... and they do so with higher percentages of unionization and employee benefits. We need to call a spade a spade, and start pointing out the level of incompetence of the American management class, which BTW still gets overpaid over 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more than its international counterparts.
If we should be outsourcing any part of our labor force, it should be management.
Boeing outsourced assembly work to a non-union company in South Carolina because it was "cheaper." Vought, to put it politely, screwed up everything that they touched. The planes assembled there are essentially being remade. (Oh yeah, I'll fly that one... Not!) Boeing ended up not only buying out Vought's 787 operations for $500 million, but they *forgave* them another $422 million in cash advances that they had made.
Wonder how much of a bonus the executives got for that brilliant move...
And it is about Vought
Speculation grows for Boeing 787 plant in South Carolina
from the geniuses who decided to move their HQ to Chicago, for no apparent reason whatsoever.
As I said, there needs to be a change in the current PR tide where these idiots, who could not manage their way out of a wet paper bag, get to blame their f*ck up after f*ck up on workers having the gall of expecting a decent salary for their hard work.
When I was a kid, pilots were almost like rock stars. Everyone envied them, little kids looked up to and emulated them. Now? I couldn't imagine a job I'd want less, unless it's that of stewardess, another job that used to be envied and now seems horrific.
...airline pilots now don't get the kind of sympathy that most of them should. "I hate Seattle, but I'm rich enough to buy houses anywhere I want, AND I can bonk any stewardess on any flight, just don't tell the wife." Yeah, way to make friends, bud. There've been a few arrogant assholes back when it was the glory days making them all look like jerks, and that sort of behaviour tended to fix a bad stereotype that's a lot harder to shed now that airline pilots are in the deep dark like the rest of us.
The vast majority of them are decent guys, and gals, who fly because they love it, although a lot of the more senior ones these days fly because they don't know how to do anything else, back in the glory days who would have thought they'd ever need to? But it takes a crapload of money to train as a pilot in the first place, hour and hours and hours in the air flying anything you can for any regional carrier going to eventually qualify for the majors, and even then it's still a dog-eat-dog profession. No one is doing it now so they can bonk stewardesses and buy a house in every hub city.
Fact is, I can't imagine why anyone is doing it anymore. Knowing what I know now from having a ringside seat for a bit, it's not a job I'd ever want.
South Carolina is the waste dump for much of the entire nation. These workers are drinking polluted ground water...and, if they are like manufacturing workers here, they're living on junk food, cigarettes, and methamphetamine. Maybe John Ensign thinks that makes a skilled workforce, but he's already proved that his brain is south of the waistline, and if he's seeking tiny Latina women, it's probably a very small dickbrain and not suited for cognitive work at all.
got as a bailout a few years back?
If it is an indication on what wall street is doing with their bailout, it seems that there is a pattern of Corporate America taking tax payer dollars to create even more anti-social labor environments. This is they are taking social money to transform their operations into completely anti-social work environments.
In other words, we... the tax payers, are paying to get screwed even harder. We're the proverbial prostitute who is too f*cking stupid to figure out she is not supposed to be the one paying the John for the screw.
Why do you think our tax dollars subsidize Public research done at Universities, only to have the big pharma companies swoop in and buy up the rights to vaccines and medicines?
The entire plan of "conservatives" isn't to make "government" small, but to REDIRECT PUBLIC WEALTH INTO PRIVATE HANDS. And thus far, it's working gangbusters, whether it's tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy, or tax breaks for corporations, or Halliburton no-bid contracts, or private school vouchers, or Wall Street bailouts, and on and on and on.
They'd have you believe that people are getting rich from ingenuity and hard work, all the while stealing from the public coffers. Because that's where the real money is at.
... I always got a hoot about all those rich captain of industry whose revenues depend directly on public contracts (hey, let's not call it subsidies, that is what them Socialist pinko commie 'roopeans do!).
I think it gets even funnier, when the same a**holes try to convince everybody else to pull themselves by the bootstraps/shoelaces (how exactly is one supposed to do that? I never got that idiom) and not depend on "government" to make their lives better.
It is like the members of the Rolling Stones telling us not to do drugs... no sh*t asshole. We can't do drugs, because you USED THEM ALL UP ALREADY! (my condolences to Mr. Leary for stealing his line).
It's just maddening. Given all of this why would anyone want to come to this country to live and work? When even airline pilots can't make a decent living you know something is wrong!
The majority of pilots get their license for the love of flying, not the money. The aviation industry knows this and uses it to their advantage. This is nothing new and has been going on for decades.
For every pilot that wont fly for any particular reason, there is someone new standing in the hallway that will take his place.
Most pilots in the industry don't fly airliners, but the small commuter planes and charters you see at almost every local airport. They have to put in their time before they earn their way into the heavy aircraft.
I've spent the last 3 decades chartering helicopters and light aircraft as part of my job. The reality of what these guys do is far different from the impression most people have. Taxi drivers with wings. And most companies treat them that way.
If the plane is bigger, make that a bus driver with wings.
The fact that the poor wages are starting to affect the higher end jobs in the industry is troubling. They've had to rely on people loving to fly to keep the cockpits filled already. What's left for an incentive?
Flying from a pilots perspective: Hours and hours of boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer panic.
Yikes!! Makes sense though, I guess.
Thanks for the perspective.
don't it?
I saw the movie - this nothing short of criminal. They're being shafted just like the rest of middle America.
Fuck Ronald Reagan.
All the Re=Thugs went crazy when Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize -- "Why didn't Ronald Reagan get one??" they screamed in outrage.
I would say mainly because Reagan was the antithesis of all that was good, decent and honorable.
*
My truck-driver husband makes more money sitting at a truck stop than that pilot does when he's flying a passenger jet.
This is criminal.
We know it's criminal but what do we do now? The american taxpayer spent billions on airline inferstructure, while letting our road, and railways fall behind. Yet, the corperations running the airlines want to keep shafting the pilots to the point where they don't want to fly anymore. What is the answer to this mess?
But at $5.4 million dollars a year, I seriously doubt that will be happening anytime soon.
On that kind of money, you only have to work for a year to make what it would take an average pilot ONE HUNDRED YEARS to make.
That's what I want to know. The union guys who fly the planes, who build the houses and planes and bridges and train tracks and bank and financial institutions...the people who have built this nation are second class. And I am tired of it.
I want to be respected. I want my MOTHER and FATHER (may they rest in peace) to be respected. I want my children to be respected.
I am tired of the CEO's walking away with bonuses and salaries that make no sense. They are destroying this country as they destroy companies one by one by one.
What an embarrassment to this country. God..are we stupid or what?
The air traffic controllers should have been allowed to strike. How else can the people hold the profiteers accountable?
Media used to do investigative reporting. But they don't do that anymore.
Unions used to strike. But there are no unions anymore.
Government agencies used to protect the public. But they've been whittled down to nothing.
Congress used to fight for the public good. But they're owned by private business.
Who's out there fighting for the people? To make sure our air traffic controllers are getting enough sleep? To make sure our pilots aren't working three jobs? To make sure our kids aren't eating lead in their toys? To make sure our water's safe to drink? To make sure the banks aren't stealing our money?
Anybody?
I think it is that we have gotten to a point where we do not respect competence any more. There is a sector of the country that really seems to hate knowlege and science -- perhaps because it conflicts with their religion. Engineers, scientists, pilots, and all of those other "fancy pants" need to be put in their place.
Kind of reminds me of the Communist revolution in China where the initial reaction was to attack the intellictual "elite" -- who needs doctors, they don't know anything anyway. Off to the rice fields with you!
... when anti-intellectualism starts to take hold in a society, it is time to turn off the switch and leave the room. Because that society, for all intents and purposes is done.
if you want to know what the guys driving the plane are thinking:
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/regional/44...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEIB4baOSd8
I was a nationally certified paramedic and I made 8.30 an hour. The only thing that made it livable were the 60-80 hour weeks. Ask your local medic what they make. Be prepared to pick your jaw off the floor.
In most of East Tennessee, they make fifty cents above minimum, and yes, they do get food stamps and some get welfare.
In N Ga, it's not much better. I know one who had a psychiatric and physical breakdown from stress. Currently, he's an intelligent but nearing wetbrained total alcoholic casualty.
Your watching the demise of the middle class... airline pilots are just one segment of the demographics.
Nothing will change unless:
1. Put the income tax rate back to pre Reagan.
2. Treat capitol gain taxes as income tax.
3. Ban lobbyist "fund raising" to congressional reps.
4. Put all the regulatory laws back to pre Reagan.
Of course none of this is going to happen so the middle class if fucked.
Labor and unions where dismantled when Reagan fired all the air controllers. Labor unions should have called a national strike AFL/CIO Teamster... etc. Their lack of a spine was the beginning of the end for labor unions. It doesn't matter which side of the aisle your on with unions, a strong argument can be made their collapse has hurt every middle class person.
"I hadn't heard anywhere that this stuff about the airlines is in this new movie," the pilot said.
I never saw anything about Sullenberger's testimony before Congress anywhere but the blogs.
PATCO is gone and so is Reagan.
Aviation's major cost problems aren't wages or unions, it's the oil.
My cousin is a pilot for United and I was shocked when he told me how little he makes for working a such a skilled job.
The reason why airline pilots don't want their children to fly is so that they are not exposed to toxic cabin air, which the BBC recently reported have been identifeid (again) as causing serious neurological problems (brain damage) in aircrew and passengers.....
www.aerotoxic.org for much, much moore...
The best kept secret in aviation and 10 years old on 20th October 2009.
This is just sarcasm folks.
The whole AirTraffic Control system is just more socialism.
If I can save a few cents on my taxes, who cares if a few planes bump into each other every now and then. Anyway I don't fly and the closest a plane has ever come to falling on my head was about 15 miles away.
The FAA issues a publication called "Airman's Information Manual". It has the force of law. Section 8-1-1-b reads:
"b. Illness.
1. Even a minor illness suffered in day‐to‐day
living can seriously degrade performance of many
piloting tasks vital to safe flight. Illness can produce
fever and distracting symptoms that can impair
judgment, memory, alertness, and the ability to make
calculations. Although symptoms from an illness
may be under adequate control with a medication, the
medication itself may decrease pilot performance.
2. The safest rule is not to fly while suffering
from any illness. If this rule is considered too
stringent for a particular illness, the pilot should
contact an Aviation Medical Examiner for advice."
Where is the FAA enforcement action against this pilot's airline???
Login or Register to post comments.