Pilots on Food Stamps

**ckn** · October 12th, 2009, 06:48 AM

Link to Michael Moore website

I know this isn't the usual preference of the majority of this site but this is not the first time I've heard this story. I saw one article a good few years ago about a pilot being sacked for revealing that he was entitled to state welfare because he was so poorly paid.

I agree entirely with Michael Moore for the first time ever:

Quote:

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

The full article for those of you who don't want to contaminate your computers by visiting his site

Quote:

Pilots on Food Stamps
By Michael Moore

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.

**tidalwave** · October 12th, 2009, 07:34 AM

I remember being surprised when I heard how much some pilots make. The ones flying the long-haul jets do pretty well, but the commuter and regional pilots seem to have quite a low income. For me, this came to light right after the crash of Continental Connection 2407 back in February. The reports mentioned how little the pilots made and that the co-pilot actually had a part-time job working at Starbucks. Heck, I know plenty of non-union truck drivers who receive a better rate than they had.

One distinction is that a lot of these underpaid pilots are working for smaller regional carriers who work as contractors for the major airlines. The pilots in the example above actually worked for Colgan Air of Manassas, Virginia, but were flying under the Continental banner.

Either way, I think most people would pay a little bit more for their trip to ensure that the ones at the yoke are properly trained and compensated.

Rock36 · October 12th, 2009, 08:41 AM

I'm a skeptical guy, I'm even skeptic of guys like Michael Moore. Not for my personal political affiliations, but because I believe EVERYONE has an agenda. Especially a guy who has, in essence, made a fortune attacking members of his own financial class.

A quick search of a couple internet sits listed below shows a completely different story:

PayScale - Salary Comparison, Salary Survey, Wages
Find Jobs. Build a Better Career. Find Your Calling. | Monster.com
Job Salaries-Performance Reviews-Compensation software- Salary.com

After looking for about 15 minutes, the low end of everything I saw was about $25K to $40K a year (far from $17k and $405/week), and even that was the low end of the scale for pilots with only 1-4 years of experience.

The point being, this seems to be an extreme example being presented as the norm.

**ckn** · October 12th, 2009, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rock36

I'm a skeptical guy, I'm even skeptic of guys like Michael Moore. Not for my personal political affiliations, but because I believe EVERYONE has an agenda. Especially a guy who has, in essence, made a fortune attacking members of his own financial class.

A quick search of a couple internet sits listed below shows a completely different story:

PayScale - Salary Comparison, Salary Survey, Wages
Find Jobs. Build a Better Career. Find Your Calling. | Monster.com
Job Salaries-Performance Reviews-Compensation software- Salary.com

After looking for about 15 minutes, the low end of everything I saw was about $25K to $40K a year (far from $17k and $405/week), and even that was the low end of the scale for pilots with only 1-4 years of experience.

The point being, this seems to be an extreme example being presented as the norm.

I have a friend (more of an acquaintance really) who used to be a garbage hauler (transport pilot) in the British Royal Air Force. He was looking at commercial pilot jobs to get out of service life. The bottom end jobs aren't advertised or made commercially available, they go to newly qualified and desperate pilots who essentially work for the hope they'll get a better job with experience; they also have hugely punitive confidentiality clauses in the contracts to keep the pay rate out of the newspapers.

$25k, minus deductions, taxes, "training costs", "uniform costs", etc makes easily for a $405 take home pay per week, if not less. Some budget airlines also make potential pilots pay for compulsory conversion courses to their airline, even if the pilot has huge experience on that class/type of aircraft.

In the UK, train drivers get nearly $50,000 as a starting wage! To consider that pilots would get $25,000 for a much more responsible job is astonishing.

**wil** · October 12th, 2009, 10:18 AM

I don't mean to be a dillhole here, but it seems to me that if the pay is so bad, then those folks should consider a career change. If I could make more (or the same) delivering pizzas or digging ditches than I do in my current job as a computer programmer, I would change course in a heartbeat. Just sayin.

SUPREME · October 12th, 2009, 11:15 AM

WOW! From now on I'm DRIVING EVERYWHERE. Who's to say that a disgruntled pilot doesn't strap on a parachute and just do a "007" outta commercial flight because he's not paid enough? Pilots carry ALOT of lives on these flights and they get paid WAY less than say an NFL kicker/punter? Something is JUST NOT RIGHT.