fastair

Trickle down effect. Depending on how far you want to go removed from my hourly wage negotiated by my union and agreed to by my company, you partially fund the accounts that pay my salary, but have no say into my pay, now whose money goes to me and how much of it. In turn, freight forwarders also pay some of it and I have nothing to do with freight. The USPS pays some...again, I ahve nothing to do with that. Where did the USPS, the freight forwarders and you get your $$ from that you pay to UA? Since you want to go up the trickle down ladder a few steps, why does the buck magically stop with you? As long as we have gone numerous rungs from the direct source of the payroll account to you, let's go further, and say your employeer, their customers, their employeers...all the way to the US mint and those that determine fiscal policy.

Again, it is a nice concept to think that somehow, you pay me directly, but I am not in a "tip" profession. I never have received $$ from a customer (although I have been offered many times) and stuck it in my pocket. One cannot argue the trickle down effect and then stop it only when the ladder reaches you, if you wish to go to 2ndary and tertiary sources, by the same logic, one must go to quaternary and even furthur. I am not a waiter, a fast food delivery guy, or someone on comission. I receive an hourly rate. Just as a pilot gets paid the same if his plane has 1 passenger on it or 300 (for the same aircraft type and block to block time.) That alone should go to show, that my pay (as well as a pilot's, who of course is what the thread is about) salary is not paid by a customer. If that were so, then the full planes should pay the pilot more, and the less full (or got forbid, ferrying an empty plane) would pay him little to no money, which just isn't how it works.
Literal factual arguements work well with me, conceptual motivational speak that has far less impact on the reality of how I get paid, and where the direct funds come from has much more of an impact on me. Both mine, as well as the pilot's contract spell out pay rules. Nowhere in them is anything at all to do with getting paid by the end consumer.

One of the reasons corporations actualy LIKE unions is that it provides them a predictable cost model of labor costs. Regardless of company performance, the labor cost is pretty much already known and determined by the company in advance. The company could do great, but the labor costs are relativly fixed. The concept of the end consumer paying those costs directly does not work as well in such a model, as that would make labor a much more variable cost. Bean counters don't like variable costs in large corporations when they can eliminate the variablility with long term contracts amking them fixed.