PSA Fires Agents

[Heinrich]

PSA employees ,like most everyone else, stood by the company because we were asked to do so. They asked us to be patient and we were. But FOUR YEARS?!? For most of us this is our career, hula. You can't just walk away for it. We've waited and waited for ours to come, because we were told it was comming. Others segments of this airline are getting theirs and they did'nt have to wait four years. Why would they treat other employees this way? Its just wrong, plain and simple.

That's fine, well, and good...but there are not too many jobs in America where you can just walk off the job on your own and disappear with no approval and expect to return to work.

If life is that miserable there are always the Classifieds.

 

[wings396]

Please don't lie about the PIT pay scale. They start at 6.77 and get a decent raise after 6 months.. I want to say it is 60 or 80 cents, but I know after a year it puts them over $1.00 what they started at.

Yes, the contract sucks, but thank the union leaders for telling the same members that walked out, to vote down the contract, which would have put them damn near or at Piedmont levels.

You have got to be kidding here...
Take a minute to read what you have typed..
Start at a measly $6.77 an hour, and get a DECENT RAISE after six months, which puts them up in the Big-Time with
$7.77 an hour.
When was the last time you tried to live on those type of poverty wages??

My teenage kid works P/T at a local fast food place, and is within that payscale now. As long as there are enough Fools to keep working for the Express carriers, they will continue to pay Crap wages. Many are too young to realize at first that they are making squat to work for an "Airline".
Do tickets cost less when you are flying on an Express flight???? NO, so why are their employees getting poverty wages?? There should have been a stance put up aginst this years ago, and we would not have seen the "Expressing" of a good portion of the Industry. Express A/C and stations have becmome nothing more than a tool used to Screw Mainline workers out of a decent paying job. The company knows that several agents will not move when their station goes Express, and will stay and work for the Express carrier for 1/2 of what they used to earn. Take a good look at what Express has actually become today. They are flying Jets that carry anywhere from 50-90 passengers just as the F-28 and F-100 did, but they fall under the payscales of Express which USED to be props that carried 25-35 passengers. Get the picture of what has taken place here???

 

[wings396]

Just to put these Great wages in perspective, I did some figuring here for you. Even if they were at $8 an hour as a Full Time employee, they would earn a yearly salary of
$16,640. This is before taxes and medical costs are taken, so we can only imagaine what little may be left afterwards.
This puts them at or below the poverty level, and would classify them as the "Working Poor".

 

[US Express-PSA Agent]

Please don't lie about the PIT pay scale. They start at 6.77 and get a decent raise after 6 months.. I want to say it is 60 or 80 cents, but I know after a year it puts them over $1.00 what they started at.

Yes, the contract sucks, but thank the union leaders for telling the same members that walked out, to vote down the contract, which would have put them damn near or at Piedmont levels.

From the PSA employement web site...
US Airways. Pay rates start at $6.77/hour in Pittsburgh, PA; Cincinnati and Dayton, OH; Key West, FL; and Louisville, KY. All other stations start at $6.27/hour with pay increases at all stations after 6 months.

This was supposed to be temporary....4 years ago. You are right, the Union bares a major part of the responsibility for what has happened. BUT, the company could have rectified the situation some time ago but chose not to.

 

[US Express-PSA Agent]

Hopefully you can figure it out before another 4 years goes by. Express agents are not careers. They are for young aimless kids looking for the allure of the airlines and older folks looking for the medical/travel benefits. If you aren't either of these, than get out and get a CAREER. Try the nursing field. Lots of need in the future and good pay. Ask PitBull.....

What a terrible thing to say. For me, it began as a career and I pray daily to God that I will be able to advance my career in the industry. It was all I ever wanted to do.
For those of us who live in remote parts of the country, the only airport it a regional one, not mainline.
No, I am not going to "get out". Instead, I am going to concentrate on my goal and move forward. I just thought that those of you who worked just as hard and got paid a whole lot more may want to know what was going on, thats all.

 

[Jimmy Neutron]

You have got to be kidding here...
Take a minute to read what you have typed..
Start at a measly $6.77 an hour, and get a DECENT RAISE after six months, which puts them up in the Big-Time with
$7.77 an hour.
When was the last time you tried to live on those type of poverty wages??

My teenage kid works P/T at a local fast food place, and is within that payscale now. As long as there are enough Fools to keep working for the Express carriers, they will continue to pay Crap wages. Many are too young to realize at first that they are making squat to work for an "Airline".
Do tickets cost less when you are flying on an Express flight???? NO, so why are their employees getting poverty wages?? There should have been a stance put up aginst this years ago, and we would not have seen the "Expressing" of a good portion of the Industry. Express A/C and stations have becmome nothing more than a tool used to Screw Mainline workers out of a decent paying job. The company knows that several agents will not move when their station goes Express, and will stay and work for the Express carrier for 1/2 of what they used to earn. Take a good look at what Express has actually become today. They are flying Jets that carry anywhere from 50-90 passengers just as the F-28 and F-100 did, but they fall under the payscales of Express which USED to be props that carried 25-35 passengers. Get the picture of what has taken place here???

For what it's worth, these jobs were mainline jobs until the first de-certification and were then farmed out in 1992.

So the whole reason in the first place was to get rid of mainline employees and replace them with low-wage go-nowhere min. wage type jobs.

As soon as the payscale begins to creep closer and closer to mainline, it no longer makes sense to have an outside vendor such as PSA doing this work.

If no one would take these jobs and the company could not fill them, the law of supply and demand would kick in and the jobs would eventually be given back to mainline where they should be anyway.

So as I stated before and I'll say it again, be careful what you wish for!

 

[Bear96]

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime . . .

 

[madders]

there is a rumour circulating that another merger within the wholly owned is near ...and the merger is between no other than the customer service department of PSA and Piedmont.
The upside is that you will get a pay increase immediately after you vote out your union....and you will top out at a whopping $13/hr ...

 

[rjh]

:angry: who cares if its legal or not this people are being
treated like dogs. while the big boys take all the money.

If they were treated like dogs, then I don't blame them for walking off the job then-but they also shouldn't expect to get their jobs back! If I walk off my job because I'm not happy, I would certainly be fired. And if I WERE treated so poorly that I would want to walk off--there's no way I'd want to go back!!

Is $6.77 a crappy wage? Of course it is! But, unfortunately, workng on the ramp is basically considered an entry level job--just like retail, fast food, movie theaters, etc. None of these are fantastic jobs, but the people that love the industry they work in try to move up. If they don't try to move up, they are fully aware of the lousy pay for these entry level jobs. If someone only wants to work on an airport ramp, or bag groceris, or work the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant: more power to 'em! Do whatever makes you happy. But those same people shoudl be realistic and not expect to turn those jobs in to a well-paying career.

That said, $6.77 is WAY on the crappy side. But again, walking out on the job is not the way to solve that. If you have crappy pay and don't see that changing: GET A NEW JOB!