Amazon [contract] pilots are grumbling

wsuffa said:
And that's the consequence of their actions. That's how capitalism works. I have no problem with that - they know how they can fix it. BTW, Amazon doesn't treat their ground transportation or warehouse workers very well, either.


I suppose if we became a socialist place this situation would be different.
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The great irony here being that the union workers are the ones envied in this situation. Essentially what everyone is saying is, "if you don't like, get the union job, it's better in every way." Irony wins again.
 
Groundpounder said:
Their guarantee is only 62 hours a month, which translates into just over $100k before taxes. In order to make $200k, that is about 120 hours of credit a month, which from what I understand isn't easy to do with Atlas and ATSG.

They are already having issues retaining and hiring pilots, it is only going to get worse.
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62 hours a month is barely even part time job. So it's $100k a year working less than half time.
 
Lindberg said:
62 hours a month is barely even part time job. So it's $100k a year working less than half time.
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I "work" 80 hours a month im gone from home 370hrs. Ill "work" 5 hours today but my showtime was 640 and ill be done at 715.

These guys are underpaid overworked and the RLA makes it hard to fight for better when you can be sued for not picking up overtime...
 
Lindberg said:
62 hours a month is barely even part time job. So it's $100k a year working less than half time.
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That's 62 hours flight time. There's quite a bit more to that equation, such as time away from base (TAFB) which means layovers. Also there is duty time involved when the aircraft is not flying.

On a typical 62 hour line the pilot is gone for over half the month. Now, you can say "gee, that's still part time" but you have to consider this is not a typical 9 to 5 job. Also consider a 747 pilot is flying numerous time zones.
 
falconkidding said:
I "work" 80 hours a month im gone from home 370hrs. Ill "work" 5 hours today but my showtime was 640 and ill be done at 715.

These guys are underpaid overworked and the RLA makes it hard to fight for better when you can be sued for not picking up overtime...
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I've worked jobs where I was away from home for weeks at a time. I still only got paid for when I was working. Maybe a small per diem as well.
 
Lindberg said:
I've worked jobs where I was away from home for weeks at a time. I still only got paid for when I was working. Maybe a small per diem as well.
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Pilots get paid for the time they work also, and a per diem. Depending on carrier they have work rules and trip rigs, where so much duty time equals 1 hour of flight pay, etc.

Looking at hard hours flown per month doesn’t tell the whole story, and it’s hardly “a part time job”.
 
Lindberg said:
I've worked jobs where I was away from home for weeks at a time. I still only got paid for when I was working. Maybe a small per diem as well.
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And you considered that ‘barely even a part time job’?
 
mryan75 said:
I'd do pretty much anything to be getting paid six figures and flying a 747.
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If you meet ATP requirements, apply to Atlas and you've got a very good chance of being hired.

Expect maybe $50,000 the first year. Training pay is $1,600/mo and generally lasts for the first four months before you move up to $80/hr. first year min guarantee is 50. At minimum guarantee (62 hours after the first year), it'll take until year 9 to exceed $100,000. You never reach $100,000 as a 767 first officer. The most junior 747 captain would be at $117/hour so $87,000 at min guarantee.

The reality, for 747 crews, is much more than minimum guarantee, though. They'll work 20+ hour duty days flying worldwide. Nothing like landing at Bagram AB in Afghanistan after being awake for 16+ hours with another 5+ hour leg to go after a couple hours of unloading/loading. You'll be paid a bit more, though.

I'm too old for that garbage!


FastEddieB said:
Seems like this is nothing but free market supply and demand determining wages.
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It is, as modified by the Railway Labor Act. It is a slow process. Corrections take years to work themselves out. That's the process in which Atlas and ABX Air is currently engaged.


mryan75 said:
Union vs. non-union.
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Both Atlas Air and ABX Air are unionized. They both belong to IBT Local 1224.


Lindberg said:
62 hours a month is barely even part time job. So it's $100k a year working less than half time.
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That's like saying a salesman works only four hours a day because you're only counting the time he's talking to current and potential customers. It's like saying a programming is only working when he's typing code. Saying a supermarket employee is only working when actively checking out a customer or restocking a shelf.

It's a measure of productivity that works well as basis for pay calculations. It does not indicate how much time the pilot is working or is away from home.
 
kayoh190 said:
And you considered that ‘barely even a part time job’?
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No, because I was working 11-14 hour days, 6 days a week. These flying gigs seem fairly "typical" remote jobs where you don't get paid for downtime. By way of comparison, young lawyers with >$100k in student debt are billing 200 hrs/mo for ~$200k/yr. And most people (myself included) consider that a very well-paying job.
 
As they should be. They're getting crap wages for what they're doing.
 
Groundpounder said:
ATSG and Atlas are both union shops.
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But the union rules don't protect them from Amazon's predatory contracts. Third party arrangements have become the corporate method of union busting.
 
The whipsaw has moved from the regional world (for the time being) to the ACMI DHL/Amazon world.
 
Larry in TN said:
Just talked to a 55yr old friend who's a 25-yr 767 Captain at ABX Air, one of ATSG's airlines. He's applying to UPS, United, and others.
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ABX (Airborne Express) began the slide over ten years ago. Before DHL showed up, they were on the verge of bankruptcy, flying a fleet of cargo aircraft with no cargo doors using a homemade can and loading system that was not compatible with anything else in the world. Their ILN sort was all done manually, and the airport was sitting on an EPA superfund site. DHL bought them for over $1billion (the people in DHL that engineered the buyout quickly left after the closing). Airborne Express became ABX Air under CEO Joe Hete, who immediately began undercutting the legacy DHL Airline (renamed Astar Air Cargo) and started the race to the bottom. The Astar pilots (ALPA) decided not to play along and held the line while ABX's union began givebacks to garner more flying.

Ultimately ABX prevailed in taking over DHL's flying, at the cost of pilot pay and work rules. However, DHL brought in even more players (Atlas/Polar/Southern/ATI and others) and began whipsawing them against each other.

Now Amazon has seen the model and wants to emulate it.

Personally I don't see any improvements coming.
 
I work a full time job (non flying) that has me traveling a few times a month for a few days at a time. When I’m traveling, I’m usually up earlier than normal, have a working dinner with colleagues, and end up catching up on my routine work at night that I didn’t do because of the full day; And when I get home, I’m catching up on more of the routine work. It’s not just 40 hours and I *only* get paid a flat salary.

Some of these flying jobs sound like pilots have many days off at home, but when they’re “on”, they are very full days. How does the math work when pilots include the non-flying “on” time, including hotel stays? In dollars per hour?
 
Doc Holliday said:
That whipsaw has been going on in the ACMI DHL/Amazon world since 2008.
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Since 2003.

Doc Holliday said:
ABX (Airborne Express) began the slide over ten years ago.
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I lived through it all, but my recollection differs significantly from yours.

I'm just happy to be away from it all and flying where hardly anything is painted yellow.

455 Bravo Uniform said:
How does the math work when pilots include the non-flying “on” time, including hotel stays? In dollars per hour?
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If varies significantly based on for whom you fly, what equipment you fly, where you're based, and where you live.

Long work days (long as in 11 to 16 hours) with significantly different start times from day to day are the most difficult for me. It's difficult to fly until 2am (body clock) one day then get up at 3am (body clock) to fly a couple days later even if you have what looks like a good layover to recover in between. You can't make yourself sleep when your body doesn't want to sleep.

On augmented crews the duty days can be a lot longer. How you do depends mostly on your ability to sleep in the airplane bunk.
 
AKBill said:
What does that turn out to be in wages. Work 300 days a year at 4 or 5 hours a day for an income of about $200,000. Sign me up..:rolleyes:
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I am going to say this nicely. You have no idea what your talking about. Those guys are worked to exhaustion and are often away from home almost 300 days a year. Try telling your family you are taking a job where you will only see them a few days a month and will be so jet lagged on those days that you can barely acknowledge them. You also don’t seem to understand that 4 or 5 hours a day is flight time and to generate that they might be on duty working 8 to 20 hours straight.
 
NJP_MAN said:
Live by the seniority, die by the seniority I suppose. Everyone loves having good seniority until it traps you financially from making a move to another employer. Or so it seems. I don't ever want to be in that situation and fell for those that are in that situation.
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Just another FNG walking in expecting the established pilots to move over so you can get to the gravy. I am sure there are plenty of non union employers out there for you.

One of the recent strikes they had was over call back of the better paid pilots instead of hiring lower paid FNGs.
 
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Something really smells. There's supposed to be this big pilot shortage. All these airlines showed up at Oshkosh to try and hire pilots. If all that's true, how does Amazon lowball? They aren't that old, no one has been flying with them that long. Smells.
 
steingar said:
Something really smells. There's supposed to be this big pilot shortage. All these airlines showed up at Oshkosh to try and hire pilots. If all that's true, how does Amazon lowball? They aren't that old, no one has been flying with them that long. Smells.
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Amazon doesn't have an airline. They use contractors.

Three airlines fly for Amazon. ABX Air, Atlas, and Air Transport Int'l (ATI).

ABX and Atlas were good employers in the past. They each have a significant contingent of older pilots who worked there when they were pretty good jobs. Many of those longer-term employees have left for better jobs while some have remained, not wanting to start over at age 50+, and have been fighting to improve their working conditions back closer to what they used to be.

Both ABX and Atlas have been in contract negotiations for years. The current Atlas contract became amenable (under the RLA they never expire) over three years ago. I can't find the amendable date for the ABX contract at the moment but it was even before that.

ATI has the best, and most recently signed, contract of the three. Amazon has been shifting flying away from ABX and Atlas in favor of ATI. It was Atlas that had the fatal crash in Houston last February. Preliminary information suggests issues with crew training and/or experience.

Atlas and ABX are having a lot of trouble finding qualified applicants. ABX has a history of having "new-hires" no-show on the first day of class. They've addressed this by lowering their hiring standards, if not minimums, and shrinking. Atlas is having similar problems with hiring and retention.
 
steingar said:
Something really smells. There's supposed to be this big pilot shortage. All these airlines showed up at Oshkosh to try and hire pilots. If all that's true, how does Amazon lowball? They aren't that old, no one has been flying with them that long. Smells.
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The not-so-cream-of-the-crop is snatched up by lowball outfits (whether they are pilots or dentists or whatever).
 
skier said:
Yes, statistically for the United States taken as a whole $100k is a great wage.

income-distribution-full-time-year-round-us-individual-income-earners-and-federal-government-employees-2011.png
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When you are a @skier, everything looks like a mountain.
 
Lindberg said:
62 hours a month is barely even part time job. So it's $100k a year working less than half time.
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As far as I know, those pilots get paid only for the time the parking brake is off, not for waiting between flights, pre-flight checks, loading/unloading time, weather and route briefings, etc. etc. etc. So no, it's not working less than half time, any more than a firefighter is working less than half time because they're not always holding a hose.
 
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