A read for all negotiating pilots - Even the Meter Reader job, which requires no education makes $70k a year!

[rookiepilot]

Nobody is saying that here.

You're quoting a question about the PIC and posting a reply about FO wages.

By definition, the FO is not PIC.

OK.

The new PIC of a clapped out Dash 8 flying a surgeon from Montreal to Toronto should make more than the surgeon?

I dare you to tell any doctor that to his face.

These threads have gone totally stupid. You've lost me.

Rookie, are you actually this dense? Employee on board!!!!!!! not that the pilot should make more than any possible passenger in the back. Jesus, you can't be this stupid.

That's what the thread says.

[rookiepilot]

Is it your contention that the PIC must necessarily be the highest paid person board?

100%

[Old fella]

I convince myself every year of late to stick around this dubious site strictly for its entertainment value. It’s getting like a slapstick comedy routine with the usual factions squaring off against each other. Priceless is the word.

[Slats]

That a 250 hour new FO should be paid more than a doctor with a pile of degrees and years in Med school.

It's offensive. I don't care if those exact words were used, the attitude comes across loud and clear.

MOD's -- I suggest these employment compensation threads be moved where they belong -- to the right sub-forum. Or create a new one, alongside Covid.

Let's talk airplanes and aviation here.

Would it being moved to another sub-forum stop you from clicking and commenting on it, given that even though you find it "offensive" you still chose to read it, and participate in the discussion? What a very modern attitude, to read or hear something you don't like, scream "OFFENSIVE!" and, rather than just choose to ignore it, demand that it be moved out of sight, in spite of the fact that it is relevant to the majority of people here. Most of us here are not amateurs playing at aviation as a hobby. For most of us, aviation is our chosen career and our livelihood. And given the recent demand for professional pilots, what they should be compensated in light of that demand and the skyrocketing cost of living, has become one of the most pressing and common themes in the industry in North America. That this topic should be discussed here in the most popular sub forum seems entirely appropriate.

After 20+ years in this industry, it is refreshing to finally see conditions turn in favour of pilots. Hopefully as a collective, we can shake off the decades of conditioning that told us that we are easily replaced if we aren't willing to work for less than we suspected we might be worth. I will never understand the resistance by some here towards the idea of pilots earning a comfortable wage, or the ridiculous lines that denigrate our career such as the "glorified bus driver" or "literally anyone could do it" but it all reeks of weird insecurity and jealousy. Not anyone can do it, and fewer still could do it well. It's a respectable pursuit that comes with huge amounts of responsibility for public safety and requires a great deal of training to become good at, and a lifetime of dedication to remain highly proficient at. The folks who can't see that do not really comprehend what being a professional pilot of any stripe is truly all about. Ours is a career that deserves respect and better than average compensation. Hopefully now, as more flights get cancelled, airplanes get parked, and the door to the US job market cracks open, we will open our eyes to the fact that regardless of the low value that a few people here might place on us, we are actually in demand and as a result, we can negotiate better wages and working conditions for all of us. For those who have been paying attention to the signs, this moment has been coming for a few years now and we would do well to take advantage of it while it's here. There are plenty of news stories to be found of pilot groups securing 20 to 30+ percent wage increases. Hiring and retention bonuses are being offered. EB2 NIW visas are being granted to the USA for experienced, qualified applicants. Pilot groups should demand that their next contracts make serious gains, and those pilots not represented by unions should muster whatever internal cohesion they can to secure similar gains, or look to other, better operators if they are in a position to do so. We need to strike while the iron is hot, and it's never been hotter than right now.

[Bede]

^could not have said it better myself.

[Blueontop]

Is it your contention that the PIC must necessarily be the highest paid person board?

This is exactly what some here seem to think.

That a 250 hour new FO should be paid more than a doctor with a pile of degrees and years in Med school.

It's offensive. I don't care if those exact words were used, the attitude comes across loud and clear.

MOD's -- I suggest these employment compensation threads be moved where they belong -- to the right sub-forum. Or create a new one, alongside Covid.

Let's talk airplanes and aviation here.

Then go to your local grass strip on a sunny summer afternoon.

[rookiepilot]

Is it your contention that the PIC must necessarily be the highest paid person board?

This is exactly what some here seem to think.

That a 250 hour new FO should be paid more than a doctor with a pile of degrees and years in Med school.

It's offensive. I don't care if those exact words were used, the attitude comes across loud and clear.

MOD's -- I suggest these employment compensation threads be moved where they belong -- to the right sub-forum. Or create a new one, alongside Covid.

Let's talk airplanes and aviation here.

Then go to your local grass strip on a sunny summer afternoon.

Excellent idea.

I still don’t get, why you guys aren’t willing to strike, with all the posts on this topic. Lobby your MP’s.

Please Enlighten me.

I certainly support higher pay for newer pilots. No one wants a Colgan Air here.

[Tbayer2021]

This is exactly what some here seem to think.

That a 250 hour new FO should be paid more than a doctor with a pile of degrees and years in Med school.

It's offensive. I don't care if those exact words were used, the attitude comes across loud and clear.

MOD's -- I suggest these employment compensation threads be moved where they belong -- to the right sub-forum. Or create a new one, alongside Covid.

Let's talk airplanes and aviation here.

Then go to your local grass strip on a sunny summer afternoon.

Excellent idea.

I still don’t get, why you guys aren’t willing to strike, with all the posts on this topic. Lobby your MP’s.

Please Enlighten me.

I certainly support higher pay for newer pilots. No one wants a Colgan Air here.

It's not that pilots aren't willing to strike. First there is a formal process that must be followed that leads to a strike. You can just strike whenever you'd like. Secondly, there is history of the government mandating striking pilots back to work here in Canada. That makes many apprehensive about it and also hands a lot of leverage to the company. Different times and different leadership in government, yes. I also agree that pilots should be striking the first change they get to inflict maximum disruption. My understanding is that they are indeed gearing up for a strike.

Hopefully the government stays out and lets the market correct itself. They love to say they don't meddle in private industry matters when industry is fucking us, let's see if they say the same when its our turn.

[rookiepilot]

Then go to your local grass strip on a sunny summer afternoon.

Excellent idea.

I still don’t get, why you guys aren’t willing to strike, with all the posts on this topic. Lobby your MP’s.

Please Enlighten me.

I certainly support higher pay for newer pilots. No one wants a Colgan Air here.

It's not that pilots aren't willing to strike. First there is a formal process that must be followed that leads to a strike. You can just strike whenever you'd like. Secondly, there is history of the government mandating striking pilots back to work here in Canada. That makes many apprehensive about it and also hands a lot of leverage to the company. Different times and different leadership in government, yes. I also agree that pilots should be striking the first change they get to inflict maximum disruption. My understanding is that they are indeed gearing up for a strike.

Hopefully the government stays out and lets the market correct itself. They love to say they don't meddle in private industry matters when industry is fucking us, let's see if they say the same when its our turn.

If it was me, I would be raising an absolute sh—storm with every MP and Media outlet who would listen, about the travesty that is TFW’s in this country. It’s criminal to me.

I recognize I am not in the industry.

I also recognize Canada is a big company country club, an old boys network, and a large reason the best and brightest leave (in technology, for Silicon Valley, as one example) and Canada has always been a lame, second rate power, partly for that reason.

It is VERY hard to rise above here. The caste system is alive and well.

[Aviatard]

If it was me, I would be raising an absolute sh—storm with every MP and Media outlet who would listen, about the travesty that is TFW’s in this country. It’s criminal to me.

You are you. So why aren't you doing it? After all, it's criminal to you.

[photofly]

I don't know what a newly qualified doctor earns in Canada, and the pay structure for doctors here in Ontario is totally messed up. But here's the position in the UK which is not totally irrelevant. I found this a couple of days ago browsing on a UK forum, from a junior doctor. Just the relevant parts:

I am now enjoying the job. In the year you do three 4month rotations. My first was in Respiratory and now I’m in Urology.
Respiratory was intense. We were consistently understaffed, people were burnt out and took sick leave which was a constant cycle. We also felt unsupported and I felt like I was making a lot of decisions people with more experience should be making.

Now I’m on a surgical job it’s very different. I feel much better supported but the amount of jobs to do and the amount of patients we have is much higher than previously. We are a junior doctor down, which means locums are employed who haven’t worked in the trust before and so aren’t actually very helpful....

It seems unfair that we come out of university with up to 100,000 debt and a lower salary in comparison to the doctors doing our same job 10 years ago....

basic pay is about £29,000 but our rota is usually an average of 48 hours but can be up to 72 hours a week. If working on GP or psychiatry you would usually get basic pay. If doing a rota like surgery or medicine where you do lots of nights or on calls you can get up to around 40,000 for that three much rotation. I would guess the average salary for an F1 would be about 34,000 as you do a mix of types of shifts.

So, that's CDN$160,000 in debt, and a 48 to 70 hour working week for a base salary of CDN$55,000. Making quite literally life and death decisions. This is after a hugely competitive university intake, a three year degree, tough competitive exams, and three years of full time postgraduate pre-clinical training. And the cost of living in the UK is waaaay higher than in Canada.

I do know the only popular opinion around here is that pilots deserve more. I too would like pilots to earn more. Why not? But regardless of what we think here, a lot of the outside world also gets paid very little for some very skilled and difficult jobs too. At least bear in mind that people who aren't pilots (and by the way those are the people that set pilot wages) are not participants in this echo-chamber.

[rookiepilot]

If it was me, I would be raising an absolute sh—storm with every MP and Media outlet who would listen, about the travesty that is TFW’s in this country. It’s criminal to me.

You are you. So why aren't you doing it? After all, it's criminal to you.

I have talked to my MP. On things directly relevant to my situation in Canada.

As I’ve abundantly been told, I’m not in this industry, and its not my problem. No MP could care less on my $.02 on TFW’s.

Someone with clout in the industry needs to deliver that message. But you already know this.

That could be you, Aviatard. You’re a highly intelligent professional. Someone with lots of articulate opinions.

Get off the couch and do something to help your own industry.

Everyone is complaining. I am offering a constructive suggestion.

[Aviatard]

Everyone is complaining. I am offering a constructive suggestion.

Your constructive suggestion is “someone else should do something, but not me.”

[rookiepilot]

I don't know what a newly qualified doctor earns in Canada, and the pay structure for doctors here in Ontario is totally messed up. But here's the position in the UK which is not totally irrelevant. I found this a couple of days ago browsing on a UK forum, from a junior doctor. Just the relevant parts:

I am now enjoying the job. In the year you do three 4month rotations. My first was in Respiratory and now I’m in Urology.
Respiratory was intense. We were consistently understaffed, people were burnt out and took sick leave which was a constant cycle. We also felt unsupported and I felt like I was making a lot of decisions people with more experience should be making.

Now I’m on a surgical job it’s very different. I feel much better supported but the amount of jobs to do and the amount of patients we have is much higher than previously. We are a junior doctor down, which means locums are employed who haven’t worked in the trust before and so aren’t actually very helpful....

It seems unfair that we come out of university with up to 100,000 debt and a lower salary in comparison to the doctors doing our same job 10 years ago....

basic pay is about £29,000 but our rota is usually an average of 48 hours but can be up to 72 hours a week. If working on GP or psychiatry you would usually get basic pay. If doing a rota like surgery or medicine where you do lots of nights or on calls you can get up to around 40,000 for that three much rotation. I would guess the average salary for an F1 would be about 34,000 as you do a mix of types of shifts.

So, that's CDN$160,000 in debt, and a 48 to 70 hour working week for a base salary of CDN$55,000. Making quite literally life and death decisions. This is after a hugely competitive university intake, a three year degree, tough competitive exams, and three years of full time postgraduate pre-clinical training. And the cost of living in the UK is waaaay higher than in Canada.

I do know the only popular opinion around here is that pilots deserve more. I too would like pilots to earn more. Why not? But regardless of what we think here, a lot of the outside world also gets paid very little for some very skilled and difficult jobs too. At least bear in mind that people who aren't pilots (and by the way those are the people that set pilot wages) are not participants in this echo-chamber.

And gee, we now have a massive shortage of family (and other kinds) doctors in Canada, due to the pay and working conditions.

What a surprise. But they aren’t Professional Pilots, so they don’t matter.

No one could care less about that, except when they have the sniffles and demand to be seen right now.

[photofly]

Found the data for doctors' starting salaries in Ontario:
https://transitions.mdm.ca/en/resources ... canada-ttp

Ontario: $62,228
Quebec: $48,292

Less than a meter reader!

[rookiepilot]

Found the data for doctors' starting salaries in Ontario:
https://transitions.mdm.ca/en/resources ... canada-ttp

Ontario: $62,228
Quebec: $48,292

Less than a meter reader!

AvCan response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwfdbTvJDaQ

[cdnavater]

I don't know what a newly qualified doctor earns in Canada, and the pay structure for doctors here in Ontario is totally messed up. But here's the position in the UK which is not totally irrelevant. I found this a couple of days ago browsing on a UK forum, from a junior doctor. Just the relevant parts:

I am now enjoying the job. In the year you do three 4month rotations. My first was in Respiratory and now I’m in Urology.
Respiratory was intense. We were consistently understaffed, people were burnt out and took sick leave which was a constant cycle. We also felt unsupported and I felt like I was making a lot of decisions people with more experience should be making.

Now I’m on a surgical job it’s very different. I feel much better supported but the amount of jobs to do and the amount of patients we have is much higher than previously. We are a junior doctor down, which means locums are employed who haven’t worked in the trust before and so aren’t actually very helpful....

It seems unfair that we come out of university with up to 100,000 debt and a lower salary in comparison to the doctors doing our same job 10 years ago....

basic pay is about £29,000 but our rota is usually an average of 48 hours but can be up to 72 hours a week. If working on GP or psychiatry you would usually get basic pay. If doing a rota like surgery or medicine where you do lots of nights or on calls you can get up to around 40,000 for that three much rotation. I would guess the average salary for an F1 would be about 34,000 as you do a mix of types of shifts.

So, that's CDN$160,000 in debt, and a 48 to 70 hour working week for a base salary of CDN$55,000. Making quite literally life and death decisions. This is after a hugely competitive university intake, a three year degree, tough competitive exams, and three years of full time postgraduate pre-clinical training. And the cost of living in the UK is waaaay higher than in Canada.

I do know the only popular opinion around here is that pilots deserve more. I too would like pilots to earn more. Why not? But regardless of what we think here, a lot of the outside world also gets paid very little for some very skilled and difficult jobs too. At least bear in mind that people who aren't pilots (and by the way those are the people that set pilot wages) are not participants in this echo-chamber.

And gee, we now have a massive shortage of family (and other kinds) doctors in Canada, due to the pay and working conditions.

What a surprise. But they aren’t Professional Pilots, so they don’t matter.

No one could care less about that, except when they have the sniffles and demand to be seen right now.

Can you see how your post might come across as inflammatory?
No one said they don’t care about doctors, is this docCanada or AvCanada? It’s an aviation forum and therefore we talk about aviation related issues.
The pay for doctors seems pretty abysmal and that is very likely(most definitely) the reason there are no doctors at rural ERs and not enough at most hospitals.
Now, the problem with that is, if the government’s raise wages, it will have a direct effect on how much I make after tax, ie; my taxes will have to go up, so I kind of care. I would care more if I needed it and the resources weren’t there.
For us to get a raise, it will come from the tax payers but it will be optional, ie; no one is forcing you to take the trip, so we could price our airlines into bankruptcy, so far in the US they’ve been able to raise wages and stay in business, sustainable, hard to say.
This all being said, if the government cared that a doctor could finish their training and work most anywhere in the world, they would raise the wages, if pilots could work anywhere they wanted, a free market, the wages would have gone up years ago.
If I could’ve moved stateside and live there as a citizen, not expat, but actual citizen with a right to be there, would’ve done that 20 years ago. Now, it’s way to close to retirement, so I’ll leave it to the young guns and wish them well while I stay here and hope for mo money!

[cdnavater]

Found the data for doctors' starting salaries in Ontario:
https://transitions.mdm.ca/en/resources ... canada-ttp

Ontario: $62,228
Quebec: $48,292

Less than a meter reader!

AvCan response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwfdbTvJDaQ

Man, I posted my reply and then read this one, you know, if everyone around you is giving the same response maybe it’s time to self reflect.
Someone once told me, customer service seems to be going downhill, everywhere I go the employees are grumpy. I responded that it was weird, everywhere I go the people are great. Since we go to a lot of the same places, I pondered what the common denominator was, maybe you should think about that a bit.

[Slats]

I hesitate to post this, as I don't see the relevance of doctors' wages in a discussion about pilots' wages, as though doctors and pilots are competing for limited pieces of the same pie or their respective values to society are somehow importantly and inextricably linked. I don't see either as being the case. However, being that some (strangely) insist on making the comparison, it would seem that the average annual wage for a doctor in Canada is $388k: https://invested.mdm.ca/md-articles/phy ... ary-canada

Depending on which data set you believe, the average pilot wage in Canada is $80k-$120k. Suffice to say, pilots in Canada could realize a 30% increase in salaries and still fall well below doctors' wages, if that is important to you.

[photofly]

I hesitate to post this, as I don't see the relevance of doctors' wages in a discussion about pilots' wages, as though doctors and pilots are competing for limited pieces of the same pie or their respective values to society are somehow importantly and inextricably linked.

Thank you. That's the point I was hoping someone would make. It's equally irrelevant whether doctors earn more or less than pilots (although naturally the only other person to say so accompanies it with evidence that of course doctors do earn more than pilots...) just as it's equally irrelevant whether pilots earn more or less than the paramedic in the back, or the lawyer down the street, or the meter-reader. Presuming that the OP was hoping to be helpful to negotiating pilots and not send them off down irrelevant tangents, the whole premise of this thread from its title down is mostly bs.

The truth is that there's no scale of "deserves", and going into a discussion with the mindset that <x> "deserve" more than <y> because of the difficulty, skill level, training requirements or well-described horrible aspects of their careers, or their hero-status in the public eye, or whatnot, is pointless.

The fact is that to the airline every cookie-cutter pilot is identical both by sight (that's why they make you wear uniforms, after all) and skill, and so what you get paid depends only on how many other equally capable people are queuing up for your job.

[digits_]

The fact is that to the airline every cookie-cutter pilot is identical both by sight (that's why they make you wear uniforms, after all) and skill, and so what you get paid depends only on how many other equally capable people are queuing up for your job.

Is this different for Canadian doctors though?

From talking to (admittedly a fairly limited amount of) healthcare workers, it seems that small remote towns don't care who wants the job, as long as *someone* with the right qualifications shows up. And big cities have a long list of docs wanting to work there, which greatly takes away their leverage to ask for more money.

Doesn't the province set the salaries based on amount of visits, years on the job and area of specialization?

Basically, in Canada, wouldn't a top doc make the same as a doc who just scrapes by and avoids killing healthy patients but otherwise has barely any idea what he's doing?

Not that it matters to determine pilot wages, but it's an interesting comparison in some ways.

[photofly]

It’s different in many ways: entry to medicine is highly competitive on academic merit, and doctors are promoted to head of department, and higher positions, on merit.

Secondly there is a scale of merit among doctors: when you need a procedure you only go to the “as long as he’s breathing doc” if you have no choice. Doctors have individual relationships with their patients and pilots don’t.

[digits_]

You could say that promotion to training cpt, chief pilot and other management positions in aviation are also based on merit. So that might be a bit similar.

Secondly there is a scale of merit among doctors: when you need a procedure you only go to the “as long as he’s breathing doc” if you have no choice. Doctors have individual relationships with their patients and pilots don’t.

Do the best doctors make more than the 'as long as he's breathing' doc'?

[photofly]

Yes. And bad doctors regularly get shuffled out of the profession. Don’t ask me how I know.

The point isn’t that pilots would get paid as well as doctors if pilots were more competitive. The point is that better pilots would get paid more than worse pilots if their employment was more competitive. The same might apply to doctors too, as it does in the US.

When better pilots get paid more than worse pilots, pilots can take some individual responsibility for their earnings, which they can’t at present.

[rookiepilot]

I hesitate to post this, as I don't see the relevance of doctors' wages in a discussion about pilots' wages, as though doctors and pilots are competing for limited pieces of the same pie or their respective values to society are somehow importantly and inextricably linked. I don't see either as being the case. However, being that some (strangely) insist on making the comparison, it would seem that the average annual wage for a doctor in Canada is $388k: https://invested.mdm.ca/md-articles/phy ... ary-canada

Depending on which data set you believe, the average pilot wage in Canada is $80k-$120k. Suffice to say, pilots in Canada could realize a 30% increase in salaries and still fall well below doctors' wages, if that is important to you.

Your data conclusions are misleading. These are self employed practitioners, and that is gross clinic revenue, not personal income.

From the site you referenced, the following data is presented.

Average annual Family Physician practice gross revenue in Canada is $331,000.

From this, per the site, is deducted overhead — rent, office staff, other things common to any business, set at $150,000.

This leaves not average income of $388K, but $180,000.

In Ontario, an expensive place to live and operate a business, its $150,000. For how many years of Med School?

Referencing any doctors income above a family doctor is not even worthy of discussing, the years and years of training to become a surgeon doesn’t compare to even an experienced ATPL.