Globe: Flying into the two-tier wage world

[sourdick]

AirCanada is having labour problems. After unions representing their flight attendants failed to secure a ratified vote on (a second) agreed upon deals with the airline, the attendants were ready to walk. Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to review stalled contract talks at the airline. In so doing, she

Comments

Re: Like Crabs in a Bucket

[jamesq]

You still seem hung up on the perception that flight attendants are just customer service reps. They're not going away anytime soon due to some perceived obsoleteness on your part; They're not like milkmen. You're also hung up on the seven weeks of training - Maybe it's seven weeks of watch the slides and fill in the multiple-choice quizzes, maybe it's seven weeks of intensive training that fails out a lot of people because it's demanding. You don't know. You did compare it to helpdesk training at one point, which you subsequently described as "something a monkey could do". Maybe, just maybe, it's a little more intensive than that. Until you have a better idea, maybe you shouldn't keep harping on it.

I do know that in this thread there's been the people who've made a lot of incorrect assumptions about what Flight Attendant training entails and there's the person who actually looked up the facts. I'm pretty happy about being in the latter category personally.

As for the economical "we can pay them less so we will pay them less argument", it's hardly pure economics is it? Not when this particular battle between labour and management isn't even - the government is preventing the union from defending themselves. If you're so gung-ho for letting market forces decide, then Air Canada management can suck up a strike and all the personal inconvenience and lost business that that entails.