low AME wages throughout Canada

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motox415
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Post by motox415 »

I agree with you KKboy but what I was trying to say is the wages have not gone up in the past years but in many cases they have gone down. Back when I was making 16.00 dollars an hour as an apprentice, it seemed fair. I do not know about now though. Its not getting any cheeper to live.
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boeingboy
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Post by boeingboy »

Where are you working to make 16 an hour as an apprentice??

You must be a senior apprentice or working up north.
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Keelique
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Post by Keelique »

What I find amazing is the amount of complaining. Not being in the best position myself (rather lousy actually) I do knowwhen to quit and I also know why I even started it. Ok, not everybody has an agenda when they start out but just liking airplanes and dreaming of an engineer's title (what it means is mechanic!!!) won't pay you the bills. Yet you decided to go through with it, just like I do or almost did now. There issom much more to being an AME than just being an AME. And you can do so much more with it than just fixing your boss's airplanes. What about selfemployment? They get "rich" on it, so what keeps you from doing the same? We have a principleof free enterprise in Canada, so don't get stuck in the idea that you need to depend on somebody's mercy and cheerful talk before and at the end of the day. You need cash. Figure out how to beat the system and if it means becoming your own boss so be it. I don't think lawyers and doctors dreamed about line work when they went to school. I for myself knew before hand what I will do when I am finished. And I am almost there now. Heads up.
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plainfixer
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Post by plainfixer »

KKboy.
Just so you know, the singapore jobs require your first AME licence to be FAA, CASA, A&C, DCA or SCAA FIRST. This means if you did not hold any of these licences first, regardless of how many licences you hold now, you WILL NOT be issued a SCAA licence in order to gain the advertised jobs.
As the signing engineer in the hangar you will be incharge of a certain section of that check. you will logon all the workers to the shift, issue them workcards individually, order and pick up parts for that workcard,etc. Your position will be written like "Inspector" but you will do the work of crew chief, supervisor, team leader, sign for each job, and be held responsible for any stuff-ups and delays.
There are no WHIMS laws, so there will be painting and CPC spraying going on/around you. no masks required.
The line positions are 2days on/2 days off. The hangar positions are supposed to be 4on/4off, but it works out to be 4on/4on.
If you do go to singapore to work, try to get in with singapore airlines on the line only,with singapore airlines them selves, not via the agencies.
You will be working for your money, hope you get to enjoy it.
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KKboy
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Singapore Licencing

Post by KKboy »

Thanks Plainfixer.
You seem to have some experience in Singapore.
My time there tends to indicate differently but then I think it depends on when and where.
Obviously it appears to conflict if A+P is acceptable and TC is not but I know different contracts generate differing requirements a FEDEX aircraft will be different than Air Canada.

If they want you they will find a way to get you on staff, SCAA can be lazy.

What do you know of the Malaysia contracts they seem prefferable from a cost of living standard.
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plainfixer
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Post by plainfixer »

I have not personally worked in Maylasia, but I do hear its not as bad as it sounds. Very early last year Maylasia airlines convinced many of their expat engineers who went to emirates to come back home. You know how they did it? They paid MORE than emirates.
I got one buddy who works in the jungle on skycranes and another one who used to certify for malaysian airlines. I've done turns on Maylasian airlines aircraft and have not been impressed with the snags I see. But their aircraft do fly high hours, so down time is very minium.
A really good gig a few years ago would have been Vietnam airlines, but now their wage has dropped by 3 to 4000-00 per month. thats USD.
If you are rally interested to spend time in that part of the world you could try HAECO or Dragon Airways.
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harstat
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who to blame

Post by harstat »

The real cause of Low paying AME job in Canada is that you have to put the blame on the Governement For allowing too many Company to be issued with an operating certificate, And dont really have enough funds to properly operate as a profitable bussiness,Then what has to be cut down .is maintenance an AME that do suffer
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Fox 3
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Post by Fox 3 »

awesome, so then 95% of us would be out of jobs. yes, that is indeed the answer.

Personally I think that anyone who gets into aviation to make "the big bucks" is seriously misguided. Although having said that, I'm a licensed AME and I like my wage and love the company I work for...all is good.

my 2 cents.

~FOX~
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Post by Fox 3 »

boeingboy wrote:Where are you working to make 16 an hour as an apprentice??

You must be a senior apprentice or working up north.
my 4th year apprenticeship wage was $19.00 an hour and it was in (not northern) Alberta.
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KKboy
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Wages

Post by KKboy »

Personally I don't see the argument being correct.
You earn what you negotiate and if you are not prepared to go to the wages then you take what is offered. Unless you are unions advocate.

Some people just prefer to sit at home and complain about low wages while they accept them and do nothing about it.
Others are not worth the money they are being paid and have no options, but if you think you are worth more and cannot find a way to prove it then you aren’t worth it.

There is more to this than twisting wrenches and crimping wires.
The guys making good wages can normally manage and organize and have some understanding of the business not just the technology.

Most apprentices and many engineers I know couldn't organize a sandwich at a picnic, and therefore this inability is the root cause of their wage issues.
If you have been licenced for 10 years and make less than 100K you are not trying very hard.
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tellyourkidstogetarealjob
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Re: Wages

Post by tellyourkidstogetarealjob »

KKboy,

I realize you're joking about not trying very hard if not earning 100K but there's AME wannabes reading this who might take that seriously so try to make the joke a little more obvious.

I strongly agree with your statements:
KKboy wrote:The problem in my opinion is there are too many people who do not negotiate for higher wages combined with a system designed to pump out as many apprentices as possible from technical schools.
It is a supply and demand issue, but over the years flight crews have done better than engineers in wages due partly to their attitude towards negotiating.
Except, however, for the observation about supply and demand.

There are many industries that don't follow supply and demand economics.

Most of the time it's due to government interference, although there are private industry examples (i.e. the success of Intel chips in computers due to being chosen by IBM numbercrunchers when a much better chip, Motorola, existed).

AME wages are constantly being hamstrung by direct or indirect subsidizing of the industry. Generally this is because aerospace is seen as a highly technical (no snickering, please) industry. Governments trying to impress voters with attempts to diversify their economies love throwing our tax money at it.

For example, since 9/11 British Columbia has approximately doubled the number of AME graduates being produced. Even though apprentices were already having trouble getting started they used outdated figures about the "shortage" that's always just around the corner to justify the increase.

Additionally, HRDC I believe is still sponsoring people to get AME training. This begs the question why a high profile, "high paying" profession needs to have incentives to join it. More importantly, it puts graduates who have paid for their own training and perhaps even amassed debts doing so in a position of having to compete against their own tax money and be undercut by those who haven't made the same investment (this shouldn't be interpreted as an attack on those whose training has been sponsored only to point out a non-supply and demand factor).

The result of the above interference is to devalue apprentices to the point where employers can treat them as disposable and pay them whatever they feel like. There are exceptions, of course, but generally apprentices and brand spanking new AMEs aren't valued much because the next one is just around the corner.

If the government analyzed the retention rate in industries like aviation and began surtaxing the industries that have chronically low retention levels in order to recoup the cost of training then you would see much better treatment.

This is obviously not going to happen as the Canadian government doesn't have that kind of prowess. We know from the firearms registry fiasco it takes two billion dollars to write serial numbers down of bits of paper so anything that sophisticated is not likely.
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Post by Fox 3 »

I personally cannot stand people who bitch and do nothing about it, I agree 100% with what tellyourkidstogetarealjob says. There are many choices you can make in life, if your in aviation there has to be a reason for it. If you simply got into aviation because you thought it was all about high wages then like I said before, you are seriously misguided.

That is not to say that you cannot make high wage, but the industry is very different then almost any other out there. If all someone wanted was to make big dollars and didn't give a sh!t about what they were doing, then you should be working on the rigs, or at a lumber mill somewhere. My hometown has a nuclear power plant (no it's not springfield) and 60% of people I know went off to work there because you can push a broom around for $23.00 an hour. But myself I could not imagine doing that for a "career" which is exactly why I got into aviation...it's fun, challenging, and generally the work interesting.

Bottom line if I hated my wage enough to bitch about it, and the work itself did nothing for me, then I would go back to school and do something else (no matter what the age) to me it's not worth the headache of worrying about sh!t like this...if you don't like it, do something about it.

*none of this is directed at anybody specific, please do not get offended*

My 2 Cents

~FOX~
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Post by 737 Mech »

I made 8 bucks an hour in a lumber mill .........but agree 100 % with what your sayin
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planeguy
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Post by planeguy »

well, here is the problem. boycotting low wages in aviation is very unrealistic. schools come along and tell ame students of the glory of aviation and not what they should expect once coming out of school. whether we like it or not, 80% of the people in this field do this because of their 'love of airplanes'. when people come out of school, like myself, with a $12,000 debt, not only do i not want to push a broom for $8/hour, but i want to fulfill my time and money spent doing what i wanted to originally. employers today shaft newbies because of this. by the time an apprentice reaches 4th year, and is receiving maybe $17 or $18 max on average, it's almost time for a small raise to engineering wages. let's say $20/hour. so the low cycle of wages, in my opinion, starts from paying peanuts to apprentices and therefore paying salty peanuts to new engineers.

boycotting that $20/hour as an engineer and going to a powerplant to sweep for $23/hour is very possible, but again, it was a waste of tuition fees and time. most new engineers as myself, need to get that initial experience as an engineer in order to advance. and it comes down to choosing, sweep the powerplant for higher wages, or take the broomstick up the yinger in order to break the ice as a engineer.

it's a vicious cycle because like i said before, there is no standard in this industry of standards when it comes to wages. employers don't have any obligation or standard to pay anything because they know there are a ton of 4th year or new engineer resumes waiting to snatch any price tag. and the reason for this goes back to the government and schools for their unrealistic, glorified description of the high pay / high demand of ame's in canada... if statistics really showed the hiring rate and job vacancy rate in this country, less people would incur the tuition and time associated with the 'love of airplanes' and that would lead to less graduates. less graduates would lead to less apprentices, therefore less ame's, higher demand, and finally a need to offer competitive wages. but with an small industry like canadian aircraft maintenance pumping out new graduates every year, the applicant numbers for jobs are inflated, so the pay doesn't have to be. it's like the amount of qualified 747 captains in compared to cessna 150 instructors. all pilots can be 150 instructors so the worth and therefore pay is low.

that's my c0w
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jsmetalbashers
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Post by jsmetalbashers »

OK, here's the deal about the trade school's nowadays. It's a business, not a school. In order to have jobs for all those guys the industry would need to double in size every other year. And the tuitions have basically doubled in the last 5 years, its a money grab. As for those guys making 8/hr out of school, they are screwing themselves and the industry for doing that. I work for a good company in one of the nicest parts of Canada, starting wage for a level 1 apprentice is over 15/hr and the top engineers are well into the 30/hr range with an annual bonus of over 3000 a year the last few years (and that's PROFIT sharing). We are screaming for qualified people, and we can't find them. The key to making a good wage in aviation is this: be willing to move to make money, work for your wage (give the owner a chance to make a profit), and if you don't have a brain in your head then your no good to this industry. Good, smart, hard working AME's are going to make good money.
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Pat Richard
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Post by Pat Richard »

Where is this Shangri-la you speak of? :lol:

No really, all jokes aside, where/who is it?

I've got a gut feeling from your description, but that place has never been described with fondness.
The "screaming for qualified people" and "one of the nicest areas in Canada" bits sounds a lot like a company whose initials coincide with fried chicken. Which if true, needs no further explanation as to their inability to attract qualified AME's. Unless they've made HUGE changes to pay scales, only the old gray hairs make even close to $30 a/hr, and lots of years in are required.
If you're talking about another place, I'd love to hear who this is.
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Post by jsmetalbashers »

Good guess. It is KFC, and I know what you've heard, I've lived it. But most of the negatives you here about Kelowna are in the past. It really has improved leaps and bounds in the nine years I've been there. Including the wages, they increased huge when the last big boom was on around 99 and people were leaving in droves because of those things you heard. They learned that wages and fair treatment of the employees, especially the AME's, was important to there future. I'm making 70G+ and I'm not breaking my back at work, although they do expect an honest day's work. I also worked at Cascade for a short time and it was also a good place to work, with good wages, be it lower than Kelowna's. Don't believe everything you here, lots of times the negative guys are not going to be happy anywhere. Oh yeah and the bit about the grey hair, KFC is a very young company, as far as its tech's go, I'm 32 and I've been at top rate for 3 years.
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Pat Richard
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Post by Pat Richard »

Interesting info. I actually worked there for 5 years, so I experienced most of what people hear. I left when the profit sharing was beginning.
It always was an exercise in stress management going to work. Common theme among guys on the floor being discontent, and it made for long, miserable workdays.
That being said, I to this day respect and like PK. I always felt he would do more if the higher up's let him.
Most crewchiefs were also not inclined to stick up for there guys, with one very notable exception, and almost everyone was constantly looking around at who was looking out of the windows, down onto floor.
All in all, I don't ever find myself reminicsing about my time there, although it's encouraging to hear a positive opinion.
No offense, but there was/is really no other direction for that place to go except up.
Curiously, I've spoken to guys who left there in the past year, and they were'nt exactly glowing in their reviews.
In any case, that company will have a long uphill battle in trying to become a viable option to experienced AME's.
I would suggest they'll have more success in waiting for their fresh newbs hanging around till licensed, to fill there AME needs.
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Post by jsmetalbashers »

Oh how I enjoy to hear from x Flightcrafters, such love in their hearts. You got some valid points and its definately not for everyone, they have made gains in employee relations since you left, the higher ups started to listen to Pauls ideas. When did you leave Flighcraft? Where are you now? Is it better?
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Pat Richard
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Post by Pat Richard »

You're right, most everyone, I'll even say probably all, who have left KFC genuinely do not feel love for it. In most instances, it is justified.
For me personally, it's more disappointment. The constant atmosphere of paranoia and bitterness was overwhelming, and I regret spending as much time there as I did.
I left on my own accord, and within a year was in a position most at KFC, no matter what their years there, will never see. It was'nt just the pay, but more the opportunity I encountered once I'd left.
Opportunity at KFC generally meant he who kissed ass best might get a trip out of town for a weekend to cover holidays at a line base.
Most guys wait 5+ years for a stinkin Convair course, and are expected to almost bow down in gratitude. Having come in there with endorsements, it sickened me to see it. There was no way I was going to hang around any longer. I had a course within 3 months at my employer afterwards.
Today, I guess I've seen the light, and am basically one foot in, and one out in regards to aviation. I don't want to rely on it exclusively in the future for my income, but rather take advantage of it when needed, and preferably leave it permenantly.
I figure it owes me something back, and am happy in the fact I've realized this and ultimitely decided to move on.
In regards to KFC, it would take an awful lot of positive opinions, from people I still know there, to consider even applying again.
And unfortunately, Im only one of many.

Best of luck

Pat
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judge
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Post by judge »

$30 plus/hour in this industry does sound quite good. I'll never make that where I am.
But here's where reality sets in. I just learned a friend of mine is making $66 000/yr as a welder repairing shipping containers, with less time than I have in aviation. I make $40 000. Top wage at AC is about $65 000. We keep ppl safe at 30 000 feet in the air. He keeps cargo from getting a bit of rain splashed on it.
This industry is pathetic through and through. You can woop it up all you want about $30 plus/hour....but when a welder, electrician, pant sagging plumber or whatever can make more than I likely ever will in this industry something is definately wrong.
I am keeping my eyes WIDE open in search of a way out of this stupid life and back into a real life, without wondering if I am going to kill someone because I forgot to put a cotter pin in at 4:00 am when I am dead tired.
And when I am out, I will NEVER regret it.
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Post by Pat Richard »

When you stop and think, it is pathetic. $30 a/hr is mega bucks for most AME's, at a time when most every other trade makes at least that or more, without the concerns you describe in your scenario.

To quote Cat Driver, "this industry is truly fucked"
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jsmetalbashers
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Post by jsmetalbashers »

I think you've got to go on the road to make a good wage. Contract out, or work for a company that requires long tours away from home. You will get rewarded for that monetarily but your private life will suck. All the per diem and away from home pay will add up.
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Post by jsmetalbashers »

Well I'm eating crow today guys. I talked up my employer the other day about it treating its employees well and such. I'll give you some background as to what is going on these days at work. We received a contract to install winglets on 757's, we are new to 57's and this job, so there is a learning curve for the first airplane, and we could use ten more guys on the project. Oh and there are hefty time restraints, 3 week turn around. The guys are busting there balls to get it out and we put on a graveyard shift to help out. Well some mistakes happened today and the sh#t hit the fan. Three holes were misdrilled and the three guys who did them each got a letter on there file. One hole out of all the work these guys have been doing, we really work our asses off here. And to boot one of the guys was on the graveyard shift and he volunteered to do it. Who the hell volunteers for graveyards? With no shift premium or any insentive. He even catches sh#t for not punching the clock for all his breaks, cut a guy some slack for sacrificing his personal life for the company? No f#*kin way. Man, there's alot of contract work out there paying a minimum 37/hr for a good structures tech, starting to sound better all the time. Anyways I'm getting off topic now, and I'm sounding bitter.
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Post by planeguy »

we're a dime a dozen... we're slutbags... whores... you're a whore... i'm a whore... there's no respect for ame's in canada, and until the ame population decreases, we'll remain that way... hopefully people considering entering this field will get the inside scoop on it like many people who went towards computers and realized that the shit was over-populated... the only difference being that many retirees are approaching in aviation in comparison to computers which is relatively young... canada's airline industry sucks, business aviation is barely getting over the brink of sucking, and general aviation will always suck... so based on that, unless competition arises for any of these suckies, there will be no need to pay out good wages, because we're a dime a dozen, slutbags, and whores; you and i...
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