N.A.C. pilots’ pay claim

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 12

N.A.C. pilots’ pay claim

The pay claims of the. National Airways Corporation pilots—ranging up to salaries of $17,300 for captains of Boeing airliners—are formidable by New Zealand standards. The corporation has about 230 pilots among its staff of more than 2800. The salaries for airliner captains now range from $ll,OOO to just over $13,000. A tribunal, agreed to by the corporation and the pilots’ representatives, has been appointed to consider the pilots’ claim for a 23.5 per cent pay rise and the corporation’s counter-offer of a 10 per cent increase and changes in working conditions calculated to increase productivity. None of N.A.C.’s passengers will question the need for an agreement which provides for the payment of appropriate salaries and lays down fair and safe working conditions. But they might well wonder how it is possible to justify the top salaries now being claimed. If the justification is to be sought by reference to the salaries paid by some airlines overseas, reference must also be made to overseas living costs, to retirement ages, to opportunities for rewardings jobs on retirement, and to the comparative demand for airline pilots, which is not as keen as it once was. If relativity in pay is to be one of the grounds for higher pay, other occupations in New Zealand requiring similar competence and responsibility must be considered. No-one in the Public Service or in the Cabinet receives a salary of $17,300: few executives earn as much. Conditions, of course, are not comparable—but any airline pilot could have entered the Public Service or private industry if he did not like the conditions of work in the N.A.C.