To give you an idea for the call centre staff, the pay scale for new employees (this pay scale began in 2004) starting salary is 11.23$ an hour, with yearly raises to eventually get to ~ 20$ an hour, after 8 years.

After all deductions an employee with less then 1 year seniority makes around 600$ every two weeks.

So no, don't go there for the money....

Cheers

union bashing
 

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I am happier on an Air Canada long-haul filght with a 25-year vet FA than on a non-union carrier with no seriously experienced FAs. Slightly less thrilled to serve me coffee, much more capable of keeping me alive.

I am happier in a world Henry Ford would embrace, in which his every employee could afford a Model T.

Union-bashers are right: on non-union carriers, your peanuts will be handed to you with a higher level of sucking up. The FAs are happier. The gratitude is palpable. We feel more important.

I understand your concern. I, myself have the same concern. But it's not part of the Big Picture.

Henry Ford, unions? Ford supported Hitler throughout WWII. Even supplied him with truck parts.

Ford = Hitler? are we really having this discussion?
 

If anyone can explain how Stranger's "Hitler" comment discredits, rebuts, diminishes, challenges or even addresses my comment, it would be very helpful.

I hasten to add that I am not disputing the truth of Stranger's comment. It is perfectly, verifiably, entirely true. But it appears to me, at first blush, to be utterly irrelevant to the point I was making, which was that even industrialists sometimes believe that workers should earn a living wage. And that the industrialist's motive for this belief is not religion or socialism. In Ford's case, it was economic.

I am not touting Ford as a hero nor offering the simplistic idea that because he had one good idea all his ideas were good. Is Stranger suggesting Ford could never have been right about anything? Do I even have to make this point?

Eh, cool down. I don't disagree with your point. I just don't think mentioning Ford as an example really fits in the argument.

My point was that Ford was no lover of unions. I don't think you can really say that he would "embrace" a word in which unions are OK.

On the other hand, it seems clear he had a more enlightend view of labour relations, explicitly stating that he thought employees should earn enough to afford the products they were making.

I don't see anyone at Air Canada suggesting employees should make enough money to be able to purchase a Latitude fare.

But when you can fly for the administrative cost of the ticket, and the cost of a meal, it could be argued that you don't need to be paid at a level that would allow you to afford an expensive ticket.

The free flights have a value, much like a company car does too... One can choose to make a little less per hour for some of the other benefits. I know some AC families that probably use $20-30k in flights a year, others $0. In my mind every AC employee has a choice to work there. And I am not saying that changing jobs is an easy thing to do, specially if you are getting on in years, or have very specialized skills (regardless of the state of the economy), but the employees who are there, have to remember that they work for a company that supplies a service to the public, and AC has to do all they can to ensure they provide the training, support and incentives to ensure their employees remember this.