College of Professional Pilots

[GTFA]

"I think part of the issue, airline pilot unions try masquerade as a 'professional association', but are in reality just another trade union."

<<Just>> another trade union? Or just another bunch of misdirected workers seeking someone to take the blame. Call it what you wish, but a workforce such as professional pilots need to have unified, educated and experienced representation at any level where the operation of aircraft is affected.

A failure of a trade union is a failure of the membership.

GTFA

[imjustlurking]

If Canada wants wages like the rest of the world, it has to come in the form of limiting the supply of pilots.

That would be the case in a non-unionized environment, but with the majority of major airlines having unionized pilots, the crap pay compared to the rest of the world is a result of poor bargaining and/or young contracts.

[photofly]

Canada would need to make flying light aircraft almost prohibitively expensive or exclusive

I’m sorry- you’re clearly living in a different Canada to the one I live in, if you think flying light aircraft isn’t already prohibitively expensive and exclusive.

[PeterParker]

The problem with ALPA and other unions at various airlines is that it is too late in a pilot's career that they get to a place where the wage has been negotiated in good faith with the employer that I feel like it is already too late. Pilots by then have grown accustomed to shitty pay and don't know any better.

The idea behind a college/guild/union that I propose or second is one where anyone who comes out of flight school will become a part of automatically and when hired by a company will have this union negotiating a wage so that the pilot does not sell themselves too short because the employer is negotiating in bad faith. This organization would work in tandem with existing unions such as ALPA/ACPA/Unifor and end up representing all pilots who are not unionized or belong to smaller organizations where there is not enough room to have a union... Something that would help lift up wages industry wide.

[sportingrifle]

A few years ago, the unionized pilots in Canada all started working together to improve our 3rd world flight duty time regulations. At the eleventh hour, with success almost assured, the largest pilot union threw the whole effort under the bus. If we can’t collectively fix something as obvious and beneficial as that, it will be many decades before we are mature enough to behave with the insight and maturity to operate a professional college.

It took a near accident and the FAA to achieve in Canada what the pilot group and TC wouldn’t or couldn’t . Truly embarrassing.

[Tanker299]

What we need is an association, not a body to take over licenceing. We don’t need people handing out punishments or doing investigations. We need people to help us with good “guidelines” (as opposed to rules or regulations) to guide the aspiring pilots. The Canadian Association of Professional Pilots would do a lot better. A place where a new blue book can go and see what kind of wage they should be asking for (like the contrails system) or where they can find reputable schools, what the safety record of a particular operator and other information. The college would just be another layer of bureaucratic crap.

As for the B level job, the military takes that “trade” and has officers only fill that role. Aviation is just very young as a profession and when it’s several hundred years old like others it will be seen differently.