20k min income

[timel]

Wow that would be great! Instrutors would no more do 12k a year!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/guarantee ... -1.2691847

[moocow]

Will fail as bad as that referendum in Switzerland.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-m ... nimum-wage

I'm not against people getting decent food and a shelter but they need to at least do some community work.

[B208]

Will fail as bad as that referendum in Switzerland.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-m ... nimum-wage

I'm not against people getting decent food and a shelter but they need to at least do some community

Cold hearted tree killing misogynistic facist.

[timel]

Ya well flight schools should compensate for the 20k of course.
Strange that stuff made me remember my 254,03$ pay I made for the two first weeks may 2008, 5 days a week 12 hrs/day standby for work. Nice contractor job I got building hours as a class 4 instructor. Made that better after all. Still it is an instructor reality. Pathetic. Remember that guy coming to me asking if he would pay me 27/hrs to teach him directly avoiding school fees. I refused.

Instructors are worth min 55$ / hours. If you can't pay just don't fly.

[PilotDAR]

If you can't pay just don't fly

Absolutely.

Instructors are worth min 55$ / hours.

They should be, and I hope so, and students should willingly pay that for competent, experienced instruction. So students, step up, and pay the rate for the quality training you expect to receive, to build skills which will be life saving for you.

Instructors: Are the skills and experience that you bring to your student's learning worth the $55/hour? They should be. Are the students who are willing to rightly pay $55 per hour getting decades of flying wisdom, and thousands of hours of well varied experience in their instructor?

Personally, when I do type training (I'm not an instructor, and my "students" are already pilots), I will not be doing it for as little as $55 per hour. My students are paying for my experience. The very new instructor, who will guide their student off the ground and back on, with some unanswered questions in between, may have some work to do of their own, to be worth the $55 per hour......

[1000 HP]

In 1993 line 150 of my income tax assessment showed $12,500. This for flying a 1 million dollar Otter for 5 months, and no hope of local winter work in the area. I stretched it out but with a non-working wife and a 1 year old child, things were tight. I specifically remember drinking only free beer that year. I also remember living in a rotting mobile home and driving complete junk for cars. But at least I had a home and vehicle.

Now, 21 years later, $20,000 is said to be a reasonable amount. BRUTAL. I suppose if the wife and kids get paid that amount also it could be ok. However, getting paid $20,000 per year to do nothing is ridiculous IF you can work. The oil patch needs people in all levels. Starting wage on a rig is about $26 per hour now and will pay for a lot of time building...

[Colonel Sanders]

You guys will probably think I am on crack,
but a basic contract pilot is worth $500/day.

That's for nothing fancy - say, you want me
to drive you around in a piston twin like the
421, Beech 18 or TBone.

[timel]

500$/day is fair I think. I mean some corpo pilots can get up to 1200k-2000k a day to fill out gaps.

Did some spraying an aerial survey and pays were good when work was available. But guess what pilots around made sure everyone was on the same step and kept the prices good.
Remember having some great ops managers who kicked out some idiot willing to work for free, while we were being nicely paid.



You go to a garage and pay 70-90$/hr the hour to have your car fixed by a mechanic

[Pop n Fresh]

I remember one summer driving dump truck there was a conversation where several staff members were talking about their other jobs. This minimum income program sounds like a nice idea and I like the concept of people being able to have their needs met but.. Where will the money come from?

I was off with our kids for three years. I would not have felt right getting $60000 from a government program while doing that.

I have not even applied for EI benefits when I have been laid off several times, for the last decade or so. Just get a new job and catch up with the bills. Before then I recall it taking much longer to get the next job, unemployment insurance was more important to me at that time.

We felt having a parent spending time with our kids was worth the loss of income. The cost of the child care options we looked at for one full time and one before and after school child was going to be close to my wife's net wages. I don't know how single parents can afford day care.

[timel]

Pop n Fresh,

Actually I do agree with you. When there was no work left after summer I would have a winter work in some places, I actually never stopped working and many pilots are doing same.

I think what is sad, is that as a pilot you will maybe do 10-12k while spending your whole summer working hard, draining all your energy doing bush flights, flight instruction, fire patrols (Quebec 4-5k for the summer after paying your own training), and when you finish your summer, you'll maybe be in debts or even, than get some crappy 11,50$ seasonal job waiting to make it better later.
I know a flight school in YHU that pay their instructors 15$/hr when they work. They can hang around if they want work and they are so many to hang around that they are close fighting for their students.

I can't wait to see the old companies 1920's pricks to go for their retirement.

After thinking more about that 20k min wage, I don't think it would be a solution, flight schools or company would just hire more pilots, and let government compensate for salaries.

[Pop n Fresh]

I have seen that in a way, there was a program to subsidize hiring certain people as apprentices. Of course the company liked the program. Why wouldn't they?

I'm kind of a socialist. If a person is unable to work I don't mind using tax money to feed them. I don't want to encourage some to relax in mom's basement, play GTA, pass go and collect $200. That can be tough to prevent. I have to say I don't like the "Even if they don't have a job." part. Seems possible too many will have no motivation to bother getting one. I hope they can work something out with that part.


I firmly believe there are people working hard and being under paid. I do like the fact there is someone in government trying to help with that.

[SuperchargedRS]

Using working folks money to pay the unemployed is dumb on many levels.

It's like wild animals, you keep feeding the bears and they will not be able to fend for themselves due to becoming dependent on humans feeding them. (Truly disabled folks are exempt from what I'm saying)

Remember the govt doesn't have ANY money, that money is TAKEN out of working peoples paychecks.


Honestly I believe we should have a opt in or out option.

1 You opt in, a good chunk of your paycheck is taken out to care and feed the unemployed, if you become one of the unemployed you get to be on the dole too

2 You opt out, nothing is taken from your earnings, if you become unemployed you don't get a allowance for your unemployment, you get to get a job or spend your savings etc.



As for the low pay, it's our own fault and WE are the ONLY ones who can fix it,

don't take crap jobs.


If someone needs 5 instructors and offers only jack diddly a hr and get no bites, the owner can nut up and offer a appropriate wage or shut down for lack of instructors.


My first Job after flight school I was making something like 25k ish a year, housing and utilities were provided (nice apartment too).

If someone would have offered me 12k a year for a full time position with no benefits I would have literally laughed in their face and walked out.

[timel]

Well for instrutors it is a bit more subtle and other jobs too I think, most schools do tell their almost commercial pilots, make your instructor rating and I'll hire you after that. How much will I earn? Of course they will put out the best cases, probably will hide there are 5 other instructors in the list too. An instructor rating is business for a flight school.

Yes before doing your training you could fish for more infos, ask instructors how it works out, and you should. But you've been trusting your school the whole process.

If someone would have told me I would do 12k from may until october my first year I would have probably said no too. But arguments were, 25$/hr loads of job coming up.

[Blackroc86]

A 20K or whatever number minimum income could likely done by getting rid of old age pension, EI, Injured worker pay, etc. and rolling them all into the min income program. As long as you got rid of all the civil servants that run all those programs along with their benefits you would likely break even....

[Strobes]

Where will the money come from?

THIS.

Distorted capitalism leads only to pain society-wide, makes the rich richer, etc etc. Pure capitalism, - aka in this situation - people refusing to work for poverty wages, is the only way to go.

[complexintentions]

Couldn't disagree more. The wages are low DUE to pure capitalism. Refuse them all you want, there are millions of people willing to take the job at the wage you refuse, and then half of that. You want the cheap goods, you get the cheap labour. That labour competes with YOU. Can't have it both ways in "pure capitalism".

The simple fact is that there are more people than jobs. Period. And this trend is continuing and accelerating. Tons and tons of examples. Facebook buys Whatsapp, for 19 billion dollars. Whatsapp has...55 employees. Kodak (who?) once employed 140,000 people. Instagram has 13 employees. Everything from law clerking to x-ray scan analysis can be done either cheaply overseas or via automation. There are just very few jobs that can't be replaced, reduced, or made exponentially more efficient with technology. (Including flying airplanes!) Those that are left, are usually not of the high-paying variety.

So something has to give. It simply isn't true any longer that being unemployed can't be solved by just trying harder and not giving up. The jobs just are not there in the same numbers. They're gone and not coming back. Yes, each new technology creates new jobs but it's about the numbers. If one technician can maintain ten robots that replaced 100 workers, do the math.

They've conducted some interesting studies in a couple large US cities, experimenting with simply providing a free apartment and basic necessities to inner-city poor - and by FAR it was more cost-effective than the enormous costs of the multitude of social services used instead. Of course the loony right-wingers were incensed that these people were essentially getting money for nothing - even though the net cost was demonstrably far lower than allowing "pure capitalism" i.e. dog-eat-dog to play out.

I'm not exactly a warm fuzzy socialist. But I'm definitely a pragmatist and if you look at the actual economics of guaranteed income programs there is a case to be made. No one is suggesting a lavishly comfortable income (those are largely reserved for public employees in Canada) but simply a livable one. The social costs of unemployment are far higher than a meagre 20k/yr.

For sure the status quo is not sustainable.

[plhought]

You guys will probably think I am on crack,
but a basic contract pilot is worth $500/day.

Totally playing devil's advocate here:

Is a contract AME worth $500 bucks a day?

Regardless of profession, I think this 20k a year figure is complete BS. It's not just aviation - the number of 'working poor' in every profession is getting a little ridiculous.

[Pop n Fresh]

They've conducted some interesting studies in a couple large US cities, experimenting with simply providing a free apartment and basic necessities to inner-city poor - and by FAR it was more cost-effective than the enormous costs of the multitude of social services used instead. Of course the loony right-wingers were incensed that these people were essentially getting money for nothing - even though the net cost was demonstrably far lower than allowing "pure capitalism" i.e. dog-eat-dog to play out.

There are some bad stories about welfare work programs too. Which seems more fair to everyone else with a job. I think it was a Michael Moore movie ( yeah I don't put too much faith in that but...) where a lady basically never saw her kids because she was either at work, asleep or riding a bus. She had to work rediculas hours in more than one job to make up for money they received. Basically a company knew they owned her through the program and totally enslaved her. They did not even have to pay her because she was working for hours credited to the program.

I actually think I'm a bad example for the "Work hard and everything will be ok." argument. I have collected UI. I just stopped bothering after a while because it became more hassle than it was worth. It was more satisfying to get a job after a while than spend the time applying for EI. Sometimes you would get a job too soon and not even get any money. I had a lot of experience at getting laid off then getting another job though. Obviously it was much harder to find a job at the time I did actually collect benefits.

I personally never got a job via the UI job postings they simply did nothing for me. It got to where I started to think the postings might be fake.

The government might be able to help some people get jobs but that was never my experience.

[Strobes]

Couldn't disagree more. The wages are low DUE to pure capitalism

No. The low wages are due to workers accepting any job to fill a need to buy stuff. And because those who buy have low wages, the need for stuff at low cost is greater. Positive feedback loop.

Law of supply and demand. There is too much demand for ANY job, and the market skews to deliver those low-paying jobs. If the demand decreased for low-paying jobs, the market would correct itself.

[complexintentions]

What?

No. The low wages are due to workers accepting any job to fill a need to buy stuff.

Uh, yeah. That's that capitalism thing. More workers than jobs, so pay decreases. As you say yourself, supply and demand. Lower cost goods didn't come about because of a "need" for them, they came about as a result of cheaper manufacturing, partly from technology, mostly from cheaper labour. A large supply of cheap labour makes for a surplus of cheaper goods. But now most people can't understand the relationship between cheaper stuff made "there" and lower wages "here". We want low wages in China so our stuff at Walmart is cheap but we want Canadian companies to pay high wages. It's a disconnect, and the world is pretty connected now. Outside of civil service jobs in Canada I think some people are beginning to get it - you are competing directly with masses of people willing to do your job for less money than you make now, because for them it's more than they make now. A lot more.

There is too much demand for ANY job, and the market skews to deliver those low-paying jobs. If the demand decreased for low-paying jobs, the market would correct itself.

How will demand decrease when there is too much demand for any job? You're contradicting yourself. There is no such thing as "demand" for low-paying jobs, with more workers than jobs, demand exists, period. And that imbalance means that demand for jobs will NOT decrease, only increase. The low wage only indicates that there are people willing to take the job at a low wage. I submit that there will never be a shortage of these willing people. Not in a world of exponential population growth and massive economic disparity.

The market is not "skewing", it's behaving the way capitalism does. Hence at some point entire societies will have to at least examine programs of the type mentioned in this thread.

[Jerz]

Yea, globalization is a big equalizer. Workers today compete with cheap labour overseas. But hey, aren’t some of you bleeding hart pinkies saying that poor kids in developing country deserve better? Shame on you the blood sucking decadents. It is the same world labour market improving lives of underprivileged. You can’t have it both ways.

Aviation jobs in the West are still somewhat protected from direct competition from the Third World. Try unskilled manufacturing job market.

Third World needs more pilots. Thats why we go to work over there. Not fair really, isn’t it? Don’t hear too many complain about that.

The bottom line : you get paid what you deserve. It’s that simple. Don’t like the offer, don’t take it. Make yourself more valuable to the prospect employers and ask for more. Go work overseas. Steal some jobs back from the Third World. Plenty opportunities there. I have been doing exactly that for 20+ years, and I am quite happy with my life, thank you very much.

I occasionally do some freelance advance instructing. I charge $70/hr including ground time. I don't advertise - people come to me. Obviously they believe it is a good value. What do you have to offer for your minimum wage?