Posted on 04/11/2014 12:16:03 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Last week’s three-day strike at Lufthansa drew attention to structural problems at a company that is critical to Germany’s globalized economy. The flag carrier is losing ground against competitors, but its pilots are remaining firm. […]
(Vereinigung Cockpit)’s slogan for the strike, “Stop the profit greed” […] ended up backfiring on the pilots’ union. In the public and the press, on television and in many Internet forums, discussions of the pilots’ strike, instead of triggering debates over greedy fund managers, were focused on the pilots themselves. People across Germany were talking about whether the strike was justified or excessive. The Lufthansa pilots came under fire, given that their annual salaries can range up to €260,000 ($360,000). The tabloid newspaper Bild characterized the pilots as “luxury strikers” and noted that the highest-paid pilots, “with salaries of up to €21,000 a month, earn 10 times as much as bus drivers”—the implication being that this is clearly too much.
The early retirement program for cockpit employees in the Lufthansa Passage division triggered similar outrage. The rule, which only entered into the public awareness as a result of the strike, allows pilots to retire at 55 with 60 percent of their last salary. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
LOL. “Stop the profit greed” has rightly turned into “Stop the pilots’ greed”.
“Them fockers was flying Messerschmitts.”
““Them fockers was flying Messerschmitts.”
Heh!
Wow, incredible. I am retiring from the Navy as a Commander, over 3300 hrs to include landing on carriers and I have an ATP, B.S. from Naval Academy, and an MBA. I cannot get hired by the airlines right now. The commuters want to pay me $20,000 a year to live in San Diego, but that is a ridiculous wage. I’ll work for Lufthansa for way less than that:)
Tried your ‘ring-knocker’ buddies?
Perhaps you’d work for them for them for a few years, then you’d figure out that supply in demand dictates a lot higher wages than you agreed to.
As for 3,300 hours... Yeah that would get you hired at a commuter as a first officer.
Imagine if the USA had federal government airlines—only? That was the norm in Europe for a lot of countries.
We have Amtrak. That’s bad enough.
That’s quite bad all right. Sad thing about the rails is how they’re exemplary of government interference, in general. Don’t forget about Conrail too.
Conrail was split between CSX and Norfolk Southern almost 20 years ago. Both Class I railroads have done well with the former Conrail lines.
It’s been fifteen years. What’s been proven, of course, is that there was no need for Conrail in the first place; the regulations and taxation needed to be cut back, which was done somewhat with the Staggers Act, but notwithstanding, Conrail continued to exist for nineteen years after that, cutting and cutting their way to “profitability” (when private companies would have become profitable far sooner).
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