How have airline employees responded to lower wages? Some categories of workers, such as mechanics, have little flexibility in deciding how many hours to work, but others, such as pilots, Below is an explanation by a female pilot who works for a major airline of the impact of wages cuts on her labor supply: “We were normally scheduled for anywhere from 15 to 18 days a month, which translated into 80 to 95 hours of flying and around 280 hours of duty time Duty time includes flight planning, preflighting, crew briefing, boarding, preflight checks of the airplane, etc We bid for a monthly schedule that would fall somewhere in that range After we were assigned our schedule for a month, we usually had the flexibility to drop or trade trips within certain constraints Without going into the vast complexities of our contract, I can tell you that, in general, we were allowed to drop down to 10 days a month, provided the company could cover the trips we wanted to drop, and still be considered a full-time employee Generally, at that time, my goal was to work a minimum of 10 to 12 days a month and a maximum of 15 days a month “After the first round of pay cuts, the typical month became 16 to 20 days of flying With that round of pay cuts, my general goal became to work a minimum of 15 days a month and a maximum of 17 days a month I imagine that with another round of cuts my goal would be to keep my pay as high as I possibly can “Basically, I have a target income in mind Anything above that was great, but I chose to have more days at home rather than more pay As my target income became more difficult to achieve, I chose to work Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 653