SDG – DG MOVE study on EMPL

Finalized this december 4th by Steer Davies Gleave‘s (SDG) associate Rosie Offord, expected for summer 015 as we were directly told by DG MOVE last May 22th, their “study on employment and working conditions in air transport and airports” is now available.

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Though not primarily about it, this “investigation” is the closing chapter of answer n°1 of MEP Steinruck‘s questions where three neither-exhaustive-nor-conclusive “pay-to-fly” occurences emerge:

• Page 21: Pay-to-fly is acknowledged in published literature (e.g. Atypical employment study, Ghent University) as an issue however stakeholders did not specifically comment in this area.
• Page 159: 7.149 Pay-to-fly schemes are schemes that require pilots to contribute financially to an airline “in order to be allowed to fly and thus gain requisite flight experience”. Junior pilots without significant amounts of flight (type rating) experience are particularly vulnerable to such practices, although it is not clear how prevalent this is, or precisely which airlines are offering these schemes.
• Page 163: 7.173 Training opportunities are broadly considered by the industry to have increased across all professions by all stakeholders except the worker representatives […]. Pay-to-fly is acknowledged in published literature (e.g. Atypical employment study, Ghent University) as an issue however stakeholders did not specifically comment in this area.

Unfortunately for whatever decision European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc will make (and European pilots at large), SDG missed:

1. the exhaustive list of “precisely which airlines are offering these schemes” available on the internet for more than a year, based on…
2. the extensive number of legally binding contracts gathered during that time span (also publicly available).

Between the lines

Despite the fact that we tried to forward aforementioned documents during the summer and unlike the Atypical employment study that preconized p2f “should be prohibited, not only in the European Union, but globally”, SDG’s stance on the matter could be summed up as:

“Yes, junior pilots pay to work, but as we’re unsure how many and airlines refused to confess, the abuse may carry on“.

Bravo.