Hmm, not sure that I agree. So instead of fighting and negotiating to regain some of what you gave in a profession you love, you should just quit and do something else? Hope you are not teaching that logic to your children (if you have them...).
I believe that the outsourcing of America will someday have no boundaries if we don't fight it. Someone is always gonna jump at the chance to do it cheaper. When does it end? Do we just jeep going back to school to become more "marketable?"
Good points all. Disagreement is ok but really, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee...the pay is never going to be back to the levels we saw prior to the low cost carrier craze, or even near those levels. ALPA isn't going to get it back, no matter how hard they try or how many bill boards are put up or informational pickets lines are staged. "Never" may be an overstatement but it would take some sort of government intervention like "regulation" to get salaries back and I don't think that is going to happen in my lifetime anyway. The government just does not have the smarts or the stomach for rationalizing the industry, much less re-regulating it at the level to make it long term profitable again.
Jet Blue, Southwest, Airtran, Frontier, etc aren't exactly overseas outsourcing and they are nipping at the heels of legacy carriers. Since deregulation, the industry is too easy to break into. Many use aviation to turn large fortune into a small one but others survive and those are the ones that keep the low cost mantra alive.
In my opinion, life is too short to spend every day griping about pay, benefits, retirement, etc. lost! Even the darling of the air carriers is looking for ways to trim costs, pay may not be at the top of the list but I'd bet has been discussed in the board room. No business can ignore the largest or second largest balance sheet line item. If you are smart enough to fly a big jet, you are sure smart enough to make decent money working at second career choice. Who says you have to go back to school. Take inventory, you'd be surprised how marketable you probably are. Think outside the cockpit.
What I teach my children is irrelevant but to be complete, I encourage them to be happy and maximize their potential. It sure does not include encouraging them to tilt at windmills and working at jobs where they are POed about the pay and benefits all the time. That does not sound like happy and I'd bet it is not healthy. Guess we need to define potential but with kids, they will get to that and we may not even be close to agreement with them on that one.
I am probably just lazy...If it isn't working for me, I'm going to do something that is. There is way too much alternative opportunity to stay in a job where I'm irritated because of the pay, or anything else for that matter. Yes, that is probably the easy way out but it is also the one where the money is...oh yes there is that!
Bottom line, if you can't stand the pay, don't. The pay must not be all that unbearable for most current pilots or more would be more changing careers and the line to enter would be much shorter. I have yet to show up for a flight and heard the announcement that it was canceled because the pilots all decided to go to work at new jobs today.
I really don't intend to be flip or to minimize your concern but the point I am attempting to make as gently as possible is that we all have options. Whether we choose to exercise them is a choice...what does the proverb say...life is the sum of our choices.
Hopefully we make the ones that make us both happy and prosperous.
