Quoting Tornado82 (Reply 42):
Assuming 40hr weeks, that's $50k/yr approximately. Not bad. |
In addition, the added flexibility of picking up shifts and working overtime shifts probably gives the workers earnings potential in excess of $75-80K.
Where else can you find that kind of earnings potential without requiring a college education?
Here is a link to a good article that discusses productivity and a few other aspects of
WN's future plans.
http://www.flightinternational.com/A...n/177/204204/On+the+offensive.html
.....This reflects the company work ethic, one described by Brandeis University business professor Jody Hoffer Gittell as one with few vertical barriers, one based on the power of relationships among employees. Southwest people, motivated as much by culture as by profit sharing, undertake tasks that are not formalised by job descriptions.
So pilots will run down the jetway/airbridge ladder to toss a late-checked bag onto the luggage conveyor while flight attendants will help hustle snacks and drinks from the catering trucks to the aircraft galley. None of these seems an enormous achievement until an observer compares a traditional airline, legacy or low-fare. How many pilots at other airlines would be willing to do a landing apron search for debris while waiting for the flight to approach the gate?
The pilots, Kelly says, “are important leaders at this company”, and late last year, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, a union that is independent of the large national ALPA, initiated and agreed to a series of productivity improvements that could save the airline $4 million annually. The pilot deal adds 1.5 hours of flying a month at no added cost by reducing the number of new pilots that need to be recruited. Southwest’s 4,700 pilots fly about 67 “hard” hours a month, and a median wage for a fifth-year first officer (co-pilot) according to AIR, an Atlanta-based pilot career service, is just under $9,300 a month. That is well above the $7,600 industry average for a first officer at that grade, according to AIR. The best thing Southwest can do for its pilots, though, is to grow, Kelly says. “This is a pilots’ airline. They can advance to the left seat, to command, rapidly, and that’s what pilots want – growth.”.....
.....In the second-quarter of 2005, as fuel was in its trajectory, unit costs actually dipped despite the one-fourth increase in fuel costs. Kelly is proud that “over 34 years, we’ve been on a steady improving rate in terms of our employees. We’ve never had furloughs; we’ve never had pay cuts. And our head count per aircraft, as a real gross measure of productivity, is at the lowest level in 25 years. So as long as we find ways to work more efficiently, work smarter, we’ll grow.”
Among these ways are using gate equipment rather than auxiliary power units to cool parked aircraft; tankering and bunkering fuel; and new flight paths including some offshore routeings on north-south coastal flights that will save time; plus the retrofitting of all the airline’s 200-plus Boeing 737-700s with winglets from Aviation Partners/Boeing. New aircraft will be delivered fitted with the winglets. A major campaign for 2006 is increasing punctuality, crucial for an airline that operates over 980,000 trips a year. In the first nine months of 2005, Southwest carried over 66 million customers, while Delta Air Lines, the number two, carried 60.1 million, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Southwest is investing in an initiative it calls EFT or Electronic Flight Times, under which information from a ground-to-air datalink will be automated and used globally in both internal, operational and external reporting of flight times and delays. By the end of the year, Southwest internal flight information display and external airport displays will be connected and displayed at airports on new liquid crystal display flat panel monitors. The airline has also invested about $12 million over the past three years to speed the boarding process with an automated boarding-pass system developed with another Texas-based low-cost leader, Dell Computers.....
From what I hear, the folks in OAK are the most unhappy in the entire system. But then again, just look at the geography...
... because I'm surely not 737 qualified nor will I ever be, and I can make a heck of alot more than someone kicking bags around, or passing out peanuts, no offense to anyone. But you know what, my company treats us employees right, we treat it right, and I'll still never be going in there for a day of no pay... and our profit margins are alot higher than WN (like I said, non-airline industry).