“The situation has risen to the level where the company is illegally violating its contract with pilots by not allowing them to take contractually obligated compensatory time for the forced extra work. Throughout the year and now, especially during the 4th quarter, ABX has been forcing its pilots to fly flights because it had intentionally short-staffed its operations in the face of increased customer demands” the Airline Professionals Association said in a statement.

“ABX refused to recall pilots who had been furloughed as a result of DHL’s termination of North American operations several years ago. ABX refused to recall those pilots because it did not want to bring them back and pay them at the top of the pilots’ wage scale, as required by the pilots’ contract. ABX instead extinguished those pilots’ recall rights earlier this year and then tried to hire new pilots who would be paid at the bottom of the pilots’ wage scale. ABX management has acknowledged that its penny-wise, pound foolish scheme backfired, as it waited too long to start hiring additional pilots and actually hired too few pilots. Since then, ABX has been forcing its pilots to fly additional trips and disrupting their schedules in an effort to climb out from the staffing hole it dug for itself”.

Seems like self-serving profit motivated labor abuse to me. Wage theft is still theft.

Wage theft is actually the single largest known form of theft in the USA right now[1].

>No one knows exactly how big a problem wage theft is, but in 2012 federal and state agencies recovered $933 million for victims of wage theft. By comparison, all the property taken in all the robberies of all types in 2012, solved or unsolved, amounted to a little under $341 million.

[1] -- http://theweek.com/articles/642568/biggest-crime-waves-ameri...

I'm not sure I'd be overly eager to hang my hat on either number. Here's the FBI's stats on property crime in the US in 2012 [1], which they claim is higher than $341M.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Thanks for this! I'm interested in projects to automate the detection and reporting of wage theft.

The scheme where pilots are paid more purely from working at the same airline longer seems like a big part of the problem here. Not the only part, but a big part.

Relevant: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

Based on what I understand of economics, I have to think that pilot unions are part of the cause of the problem here. By locking pilot compensation to number of years' service at the firm, firms are unable to compete with each other for pilot talent, and incentives are screwed up (like you quoted above). Pilots are also unable to compete with each other on compensation by changing firms.

I do not mean this as any kind of defense of ABX (I know little about this situation beyond what I've read in this thread), and I agree they are morally bound to meet their contractual obligations to their pilots, but at the same time perhaps they'd be able to hire more pilots in a sane way if the airline industry pilot salaries weren't all locked up by this arbitrary and stupid (from my position) years-at-firm requirement.

Pilot unions seem like a good thing to me.

I don't want an underpaid, overworked pilot who will never be able to retire to fly a plane I'm in or over my house.

Never, ever fly a regional airline for this reason.

Disclaimer: I have a private pilot's license, and my flight instructor was working for a regional making less than $20k a year with a terrible, sleep deprivation inducing schedule. You don't make $100k as a captain for almost 15-20 years.

I agree that pilot unions and ruthless enforcement of labor protections are a good thing.

A lot of the way the industry is structured is focused around safety. Perhaps there's concern that an escalating price war over pilots would cause airlines to skimp on costs like mechanics and maintenance?