Background info on hiring techniques at the low cost airlines

[Inquirer]

Quite regularly, we have discussions here about the fairness of the practices used by low costs like Ryanair or Norwegian to employ their staff under different flags and through agencies, rather than offer direct employment, yet those discussions often lack insight, facts and figures to be really meaningful.

In this article, a detailed explanation of those practices is given, as well as examples of the cost savings associated with them, just as the risks that come with it for both the employees as well as the customers.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... per-pilots

[Boeing767copilot]

Dramatic rise in ‘self-employment’ and zero-hours contracts for crew on European aircraft

New study reveals up to 4 out of 10 airline pilots under the age of 30 are self-employed, on zero-hour contract or working through a temporary work agency

Paris/Brussels, 12 Feb 2015

An alarming number of pilots are working with no direct link to the airline they actually fly for, with some airlines – especially in the low fares sector – drawing significantly upon a ‘casualised’ workforce, reveals new research. The results of the study, carried out by the University of Ghent (Belgium) and funded by the European Commission are presented at a 2-day conference in Paris, starting today.

According to a survey with over 6000 participants, more than 1 in 6 pilots in Europe are “atypical” employees, i.e. working through a temporary work agency, as self-employed, or on a zero-hour contract with no minimum pay guaranteed.

“The study clearly shows that casualised pilots are worrying about their working conditions and where to pay their taxes and social security. This puts crew under disproportionate strain”, says Emmanuel Jahan, Chair of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue for Civil Aviation, which commissioned the study. “For the social partners a strengthened ‘home base’ principle for air crew is the key criterion towards a common definition of the workplace in labour and social security laws."

According to the researchers, self-employment is one of the most prevalent types of atypical employment. 7 out of 10 of all self-employed pilots work for a low fares airline. Yet, self-employment is sometimes used to disguise what is in reality regular employment. This creates an unfair competitive advantage for those airlines that use it and severely distorts the aviation market.

The study also reveals the safety implications of bogus self-employment: nearly half of self-employed pilots struggle to amend instructions of the airline based on safety or liability objections. Casualisation of labour in aviation is more than just about avoiding social security and taxes. It raises serious concerns about the safety of the industry.

Young pilots are the ones who are most affected by such casualisation of labour. 40% of 20-30 year old pilots are flying without being directly employed by the airline. While finding a job is difficult for young pilots in the first place, they also face situations where they end up subsidising their airline, e.g. by paying the airline to fly its aircraft in order to gain flight experience (“pay-to-fly” schemes). This creates potential conflicts of interests for an independent safety professional, and constitutes straight financial exploitation.

Much of this is possible because the existing legislation has loopholes or is not enforceable. Social security legislation, labour rules, and safety regulations must be adapted to ensure that employment models and management modes do not harm fair competition, nor damage the wellbeing or safety of passengers and crew.

“The study represents a real milestone – the most comprehensive, rigorous, and concrete attempt to quantify and qualify some of the employment problems in the aviation industry,” says Jon Horne, Vice-Chair of the Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee. “We are keen to analyse and discuss together with decision-makers the action needed to ensure long-term stability in European air transport, in particular with regard to the detrimental burden placed on younger pilots, exemplified by abhorrent ‘pay-to-fly’ schemes.”

https://www.eurocockpit.be/sites/defaul ... -111960405

[sean1982]

Hahaha ... A study ordered by and presented on an event from the european cockpit association ... In other words the Unions who would hate to see their ludicrous high wages dissappear. Sure, it's credible

[Passenger]

Hahaha ... A study ordered by and presented on an event from the european cockpit association ... In other words the Unions who would hate to see their ludicrous high wages dissappear. Sure, it's credible

Seems the above is another automatic autoreply by Ryanair's autopilot system.

Quote from the article: "...The results of the study, carried out by the University of Ghent (Belgium) and funded by the European Commission are presented at a 2-day conference in Paris, starting today..."

Could be I'm wrong, but I think that the University of Ghent and the European Commission are no unions and/or are not controlled by the European Cockpit Association.

[airazurxtror]

What is best ?
Working as self-employed on a booming profit-making airline - or as full employee for a loss-making airline since years on the brink of bankruptcy ?
Where are the pilots most "under disproportionate strain " ?

[Inquirer]

Please, let us not discuss against the background of who is having these practices but rather focus on the practices themselves.

After having read the Bloomberg article, it should be clear that there are quite worrying methods being used by some of the more aggressive players on the market and these methods clearly risk undermining a way of working which is fundamental to our economic model as a whole: imagine the same methods being used on a broad scale in other sectors of our economy; it would create a budgetary disaster as well as an economic depression in many West-European countries.

Arguably, these creative practices certainly do offer individual advantages to those individuals using them, yet at the same time they can only prosper if not being applied more widely as that would open up the prospect to importing South-East Asian working conditions in Europe (probably as an alternative to the delocalisation, something which is obviously not possible for an airline), something which is of course impossible on a wider scale if we are not also willing to accept the much lower levels of social security, government protection and ultimately the average living standards that go with it and which are driving consumer spending.

I think Europe starts to realise that it needs to somehow regulate all these practices and create a legally binding minimum social framework for people working in aviation in order to restrict certain excesses from happening and even halt some dubious current practices in order to provide a lower floor to how low this may actually go for the sake of ever more competition, similar to what has been done in the maritime sector too, btw, a sector which was faced with pretty much the same problems than aviation is today and which has -in part- been re-regulated.

[sean1982]

Hahaha ... A study ordered by and presented on an event from the european cockpit association ... In other words the Unions who would hate to see their ludicrous high wages dissappear. Sure, it's credible

Seems the above is another automatic autoreply by Ryanair's autopilot system.

Quote from the article: "...The results of the study, carried out by the University of Ghent (Belgium) and funded by the European Commission are presented at a 2-day conference in Paris, starting today..."

Could be I'm wrong, but I think that the University of Ghent and the European Commission are no unions and/or are not controlled by the European Cockpit Association.

Forgot your glasses again I suppose

presented in Paris this week at a conference of the European Cockpit Association

[Didymus]

So independent research should never be presented at sponsored conferences? In that case, there won't be many conferences left.

[sean1982]

You mean like the independent research that proved that sugar use is part of a healthy diet and than turned out to be ordered by coca-cola?

[airazurxtror]

Or the independant research about "alleged" nocivity of cigarettes - sponsorised by the tobacco manufacturers ?

[Didymus]

You were saying the conference at which it has been presented shows that it can't be independent. That argument is simply not good enough a.k.a. the association fallacy.

[sean1982]

Is has been ordered by the same association and presented on their conference

[Didymus]

Where it was presented is irrelevant. Furthermore, it was ordered but not funded by the ECA. Neither are the researchers depending on funding from the ECA for their future career. The ECA is not sponsoring any professorships, in contrast to the tobacco industry.

[airazurxtror]

I don't understand why there are so many adverse comments about the way some airlines (Ryanair, Norwegian, ...) hire their pilots, as alleged here above.
It's the pilots' business - and it's quite natural that they want to keep their privileges - but are there so many pilots that post here on Luchtzak ?
If those airlines pay their pilots a bit less (it's still quite a confortable stipend, they won't starve), they do it in order to offer cheaper fares to the travellers.
And they are here on Luchtzak many more passengers than pilots - they will enjoy cheaper tickets and the whole scheme is thus to their benefit. Why spit in the soup ?
Unless this is another kind of Ryanair bashing - I suspect from employees of unsuccessful Ryanair competitors.

[Pocahontas]

Is nice

[Passenger]

I don't understand why there are so many adverse comments about the way some airlines (Ryanair, Norwegian, ...) hire their pilots, as alleged here above.

May I suggest that you read the study then - or at least the short content in the first post here?

"...While finding a job is difficult for young pilots in the first place, they also face situations where they end up subsidising their airline, e.g. by paying the airline to fly its aircraft in order to gain flight experience (“pay-to-fly” schemes). This creates potential conflicts of interests for an independent safety professional, and constitutes straight financial exploitation...."

[airazurxtror]

I don't understand why there are so many adverse comments about the way some airlines (Ryanair, Norwegian, ...) hire their pilots, as alleged here above.

May I suggest that you read the study then - or at least the short content in the first post here?

May I suggest that you read my post in full ?
I quite understand that the pilots want to earn as much as possible and don't like to see their conditions downgraded.
What the pilots must understand is that they are paid by the customers. Thus, yes, less highly paid pilots is a good news for the traveller who, as a consequence, will pay less for his tickets.
And don't come with the safety old song, namely that badly paid pilots are unsafe - one of the biggest crashes of late was caused by Air France pilots, who are amongst the best paid.

[Inquirer]

What the pilots must understand is that they are paid by the customers. Thus, yes, less highly paid pilots is a good news for the traveller who, as a consequence, will pay less for his tickets.

Of course it is, yet this principle is valid pretty much all round, and not just limited to aviation.

If we apply this mechanism throughout our economy, ALL companies can significantly lower the costs of their products through massively slashing salaries (which is good news for us as consumers) and in theory should stimulate their sales, but since we ALL earn our living from working somehow too, we are also ALL going to be affected negatively by it (through a much lower income) if indeed it is widely done: not sure if the consumer buying power (say roughly the ratio between the 2) is going to be influenced positively by such an downward evolution on both fronts at the same time, which is why it is -IMHO- a good idea to have minimum stadards and some form of market regulation in place to prevent this race to the bottom from happening indeed: if one does it, it's fun as it creates a cheap alternative, but if everybody does it: it creates a depression.

Especially the exemple set by Norwegian for their US flights should be extremely worrying to anybody with an understanding of economics as this seems to import East-Asian working and pay conditions straight into the Western world, something which really should be blocked, IMHO!?

Imagine the same happening throughout Europe on a wide scale (not just aviation): in the end much of our European manufacturing economy is driven by the demand from domestic consumers, and so it's a very bad idea to hit that domestic consumer hard in his pocket when he goes to work as it will create a situation identical to the one we see in Greece, where constant and widespread wage reductions kickstarted a deflationary spiral which basically ruined whatever economic activity there was left in the country because most people are now simply without enough money left to buy any consumer goods (even at much lowered prices than before).

[airazurxtror]

Yes, sure.
But a good many customers of the low cost carriers only fly because the ticket is cheap.
If the price is doubled or trebled because the pilots demand higher pays, these customers will do as they used to do in the not so distant past : go by car or by train or stay home.
Less passengers will mean less flights and thus less jobs for pilots...

[FlightMate]

Who ordered or presented the study is irrelevant.

The facts remain: a lot of independent workers pilots are in fact employees of a single airline.
And the practice is common in low cost carriers.

If they were truly independent, they'd be able to offer their service to other carriers. But they are not. A contract forbids them to fly for someone else.

Sean, as a cabin crew, you might have a similar situation. If so, don't you believe it is abusive from your employer not to offer you proper employment (and all the protections that come with it?)

I actually know of similar cases in other professions, like in IT or consulting. But they are a bit different, as they provide their service to different customers. Even though their 'salary' is always paid by the same company.