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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

WSJ has no details on why the strike happened, says an "unspecified" number of flights for Amazon (actually 35/day) and even seems out of date.. since the court order ABX attempted to get was already dismissed.

Each of the pilots has worked an average of 32 emergency days so far this year (days they would have had off). In just the first 3 months of this year, 40% of captains exceeded their emergency work days.. so it's possible there are no captains or first officers on ABXs payroll with emergency work days remaining. ABX says this is a minor contractual dispute, so they should be forced back to work (along with more emergency days) and it should be resolved through arbitration/mediation. The judge didn't agree. And the issue has been ongoing for a year and half.

This article has more detail: http://aviationtribune.com/airlines/north-america/pilots-str...

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Apparently, the pilots' contract says that flight time scheduled on an emergency basis is supposed to be repaid with compensatory time off.

Clearly, from the sheer amount of emergency scheduling, the company simply does not employ enough pilots to honor all of its contract obligations. ABX needs to immediately expand its permanent pilot workforce by about 15%, and still hire additional temporary contractors to get through the end-year holiday season.

But that'd cost money and eat into profits /s

EDIT: I don't care who you are, abusing labor for profits is not morally acceptable.

I don't know the full situation (and definitely didn't downvoted you), but just because they were working "emergency hours" doesn't mean they were being abused. Workplace abuse is things like harassment, physical intimidation, etc.

“The situation has risen to the level where the company is illegally violating its contract with pilots by not allowing them to take contractually obligated compensatory time for the forced extra work. Throughout the year and now, especially during the 4th quarter, ABX has been forcing its pilots to fly flights because it had intentionally short-staffed its operations in the face of increased customer demands” the Airline Professionals Association said in a statement.

“ABX refused to recall pilots who had been furloughed as a result of DHL’s termination of North American operations several years ago. ABX refused to recall those pilots because it did not want to bring them back and pay them at the top of the pilots’ wage scale, as required by the pilots’ contract. ABX instead extinguished those pilots’ recall rights earlier this year and then tried to hire new pilots who would be paid at the bottom of the pilots’ wage scale. ABX management has acknowledged that its penny-wise, pound foolish scheme backfired, as it waited too long to start hiring additional pilots and actually hired too few pilots. Since then, ABX has been forcing its pilots to fly additional trips and disrupting their schedules in an effort to climb out from the staffing hole it dug for itself”.

Seems like self-serving profit motivated labor abuse to me. Wage theft is still theft.

Wage theft is actually the single largest known form of theft in the USA right now[1].

>No one knows exactly how big a problem wage theft is, but in 2012 federal and state agencies recovered $933 million for victims of wage theft. By comparison, all the property taken in all the robberies of all types in 2012, solved or unsolved, amounted to a little under $341 million.

[1] -- http://theweek.com/articles/642568/biggest-crime-waves-ameri...

Thanks for this! I'm interested in projects to automate the detection and reporting of wage theft.

I'm not sure I'd be overly eager to hang my hat on either number. Here's the FBI's stats on property crime in the US in 2012 [1], which they claim is higher than $341M.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

The scheme where pilots are paid more purely from working at the same airline longer seems like a big part of the problem here. Not the only part, but a big part.

Relevant: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

Based on what I understand of economics, I have to think that pilot unions are part of the cause of the problem here. By locking pilot compensation to number of years' service at the firm, firms are unable to compete with each other for pilot talent, and incentives are screwed up (like you quoted above). Pilots are also unable to compete with each other on compensation by changing firms.

I do not mean this as any kind of defense of ABX (I know little about this situation beyond what I've read in this thread), and I agree they are morally bound to meet their contractual obligations to their pilots, but at the same time perhaps they'd be able to hire more pilots in a sane way if the airline industry pilot salaries weren't all locked up by this arbitrary and stupid (from my position) years-at-firm requirement.

A lot of the way the industry is structured is focused around safety. Perhaps there's concern that an escalating price war over pilots would cause airlines to skimp on costs like mechanics and maintenance?

Pilot unions seem like a good thing to me.

I don't want an underpaid, overworked pilot who will never be able to retire to fly a plane I'm in or over my house.

Never, ever fly a regional airline for this reason.

Disclaimer: I have a private pilot's license, and my flight instructor was working for a regional making less than $20k a year with a terrible, sleep deprivation inducing schedule. You don't make $100k as a captain for almost 15-20 years.

I agree that pilot unions and ruthless enforcement of labor protections are a good thing.

The airline industry seems particularly rough. I assume it's because of the high cost of just entering the business. I was on a United Express (ie - a carrier operating under United's name) flight once and sat next to a pilot. I was listening to him talk about their imminent strike and contract negotiations and it just seemed like a bummer. Basically, the minor carrier is only big enough to contract out to one major carrier, which is also all that's economically feasible since the crew need uniforms of the major airline and the plane can't be repainted with every flight to represent another carrier.

With their dependence on United established, United then failed to pay the minor carrier. This caused the minor carrier to go delinquent on bills, salaries, etc. United then agreed to immediately backpay everything if the minor carrier agreed to salary cuts across the board. If they didn't, then United would hold out paying until a court made them.

This is made all the more insulting because United, et al, ask these same pilots not to wear their uniforms when using their food stamps.

"then United would hold out paying until"

We should really be moving away from this bullshit to blockchain-mediated escrow enforced by contract. This way the only case you don't pay upon delivered work is if you're bankrupt.

Which is what should happen here, btw. Don't want to pay? Congratulations, you're technically bankrupt. Get your shares loose.

I don't understand the down votes. In Australia, directors are personally liable if they allow their company to trade while insolvent. Good place to start.

> Basically, the minor carrier is only big enough to contract out to one major carrier

That depends on the regional carrier. The bigger ones (SkyWest, ExpressJet, Mesa, Republic, Shuttle America, Compass/GoJet/Trans States) have contracts with United as well as other carriers. The pay is still crap and barrier to entry is still very high though.

This tactic is common across businesses. Quite a few publishers in the game industry have pulled the same stunt and when the developer goes under re-hire everyone to work on the title at a lower rate.

Most publishing contracts have a clause the the publisher gets source/assets in the event of a developer bankruptcy.

Without statutory protection it's a race to the bottom. We can't expect everyone to just duke it out in the courts to sort everything out. Clearly that gives yet another advantage to big pocketed corporations. But it seems the US prefers it this way.

But what pilots would want to work there? They treat their employees like crap!

It's a self-perpetuating problem.

>ABX says this is a minor contractual dispute, so they should be forced back to work

The problem with our free market system is we don't have one.

When a company wishes to cut wages or slash benefits, free market.

When the workers decide they don't want to work under certain conditions anymore, get a judge involved.

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