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I fixed it in the interest of honesty
. The union doesn't give a rats ass about market rates. It is all talk. They want as much as they can get. EVERY contract negotiation begins with a demand for market rates. It doesn't matter how much you are getting payed or if you are even the best paid in the industry. To the union, market rates are whatever they are demanding that cycle. As for productivity, like all good unions, they limit our productivity so more pilots have to be hired and grow the seniority list to make opportunities for us all. I get it. One mans productivity is another man's unsafe pilot pushing. I love 10-12 hour layovers, cushy Heavenly Bed and Happy Hour. But if productivity was what the union cared about we would be working to the FARs and staying at airport hotels five minutes from the terminal.
Isn’t that, by definition, market rate?
You are looking at one of those guys who took a 30% pay cut to stay out of bankruptcy. It was the right thing to do at the time. But after every other major airline had been through bankruptcy, some more than once, our time came anyway. Hard to compete with competitors that get released from many of their financial obligations and walk away from pensions through bankruptcy, and you are still paying full freight to each and every creditor. I was never furloughed, or lost much seniority in the many mergers and acquisitions that have occurred over my career. But I am going on 24 months over two periods in disability where in my benefits amount to a 60%+ pay cut and no opportunity to fund a retirement barely two years away. I also spent a quarter of my career on B scale. I know what a union can do for you. I know how they operate. I am thankful for the improvements they have brought to my career. I appreciate the volunteers. But once section 6 negations get underway, Both side lie and misrepresent like the big dogs in DC.
I'd say no. Market rates are set by a free market with participants free to charge what they want and pay what they want. With two major unions controlling negations for the vast majority of pilots in America, and a seniority system that discourages pilots from individually withholding their labor and taking it to someplace that treats them better, it isn't really a free market in labor. And we can not forget that what makes unions effective, collective action to include strikes, makes them more powerful in the short term then the market for airline tickets. More to the point, given what I said, your post indicates you think market rates are simply what you ask for. That is without question wrong. Market rates are the most common price for a particular good or service based on quality, supply, demand, and service. If I am a baker and have bread to sell, I can put whatever price on it I want. If I put a price of $21.00 a loaf, that isn't market rates. I will be reminded of that when the landlord kicks me out of my building for not paying rent because I am not selling bread. What I get paid by the airline is not based on the quality of my work, and only loosely on supply of pilots, since none of us are leaving for another airline due to seniority, or getting out of the business. The baker can fire rude counter help and bakers that make crappy products. He can lower his price. Unions either prevent, or effectively prevent those vital elements of a free market. And, with multiyear union contracts the labor market, as it is, is effectively frozen with rates set for years by a piece of paper and not market forces that may vary over the course of the contract.