[music]

Brian Lehrer: We'll close out the week with the final installment of our call-in series on your lived experience in jobs facing labor shortages. We've heard from teachers, healthcare workers, and police officers this week. We were just talking about the burden on transit workers in the pandemic. Today, the call-in is for anyone who has left a transportation sector job of any kind.

That's anybody who's been a public transport worker, anybody else in TWU Local 100 listening right now, but also a pilot or flight attendant or any other type of airline worker, a school bus driver, truck driver. These are all experiencing shortages right now or anybody else working in the transportation field in any way. Why did you leave the field? If you haven't left your job, why do you think there are shortages of colleagues at this moment?

What do you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs in transportation? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. If you do a Google search for bus driver shortage as I did last night, you just get a whole long list of things close to home. New Jersey bus driver shortage, not easing as school year begins. There was one about Vermont. There was one about Denver.

Anybody listening who has been a school bus driver and recently left your job or anybody who is a school bus driver, a theory here is pandemic fear and that a lot of school bus drivers are older. Sometimes people have retired from other jobs, more vulnerable to COVID serious effects, and in there with a lot of unmasked kids and unvaccinated kids before the children's vaccines even came into being.

Maybe that's it or maybe it's other things for you, former school bus drivers, 212-433-WNYC. The shortage of airline pilots, some of you are maybe riders, flyers who've been caught as passengers in the airline pilot shortages. Some of which were popups day-to-day this summer as you've tried to fly from place to place. We've had some airline pilots call in in the past.

Any pilots or former pilots listening right now, why are people leaving that job? You feel safe in the cockpit from COVID, don't you, or maybe not? Tell us why people are leaving the job of airline pilots retiring in greater numbers than before the pandemic and why there are shortages today in your opinion if you currently work in the field or if you used to be an airline pilot. Same thing for flight attendants. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

There was a report from the transit center, that's a think tank, I guess, cited on Streetsblog, which revealed that more than 9 and 10 public transit agencies were struggling to hire new employees with bus operator jobs, that's like city bus, not school bus, being the hardest to fill. A survey of 117 transit agencies by the American Public Transportation Association found that two-thirds of those agencies were struggling to retain workers.

Why do you think that is? Any other TWU Local 100 members listening right now, retired or not, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Of course, throughout the pandemic,

we've heard lots of stories about the shortage of pilots. An NPR projection from the Bureau of Labor Statistics said there could be 14,500 pilot openings each year for the next decade. The NPR story also tells the story of decreased applications for new pilot certificates in 2020 and 2021.

When they look at this longer term, isn't that a good job? Didn't that use to be considered a good job being an airline pilot? Has anybody listening considered becoming an airline pilot and decided against it? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Current and former transportation workers of any sort, tell us what made you decide to quit or just give us an insider's view of why these job shortages might exist in your field. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Pilots, flight attendants, school bus drivers, anyone else in transportation, why are people creating shortages by leaving or not joining your profession in the numbers that they are right now? John in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hey there. Yes, I'm a flight attendant for one of the larger airlines in the country. I'd like to think that stock buybacks and poor worker protections coupled with watered-down union power due to bad faith negotiations are part of the big corporations. The consolidation of airlines with limited competition contribute to poor working environments for the airline workers. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that the working conditions for flight attendants have gotten worse in recent years with that consolidation? Can you give us an example of how?

John: I don't know if they've gotten worse. I'm fairly new to the industry, but I will say that it transcends every airline. I think even globally, every airline is feeling it and we could say even every industry. When you see like, let's say, Starbucks workers or Chipotle workers or other workers that might have worker protections gaining--

Brian Lehrer: Starting to organize.

John: Right, and having more of that worker power movement behind them, whereas these multi-billion dollar airline corporations spend millions fighting unions or union power, it's pretty challenging.

Brian Lehrer: It's dispiriting. It sounds like it could be and so much of what we've heard all across the week from teachers on Tuesday, from healthcare workers, especially in hospital settings on Wednesday, from police officers yesterday. So much is about dignity. So much is about respect and autonomy to do your jobs. I know every industry is different, every job is different, but we have definitely had that thread across the week. Here's another flight attendant, Leonardo in Brooklyn. Leonardo, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Leonardo: Hi, Brian, thank you for all you do. Yes, I'm currently a flight attendant. I consider becoming a pilot. My dad's actually a pilot, but it is a very long and

expensive process. I personally felt my quality of life would suffer. What I wanted to point out is too many people retired, too many people were offered retirement, and that created a shortage. I think demand came back very fast. People don't realize that in order to become a pilot, there's a lot of requirements. It's a very long process.

Once you're at a major carrier, let's say you are a co-pilot on a 737, that's all you can do. You can never fly as a captain in that aircraft and vice versa. Captains are only captains, co-pilots are only co-pilots, so you have a very finite number of people first seat on that aircraft, right? That's why we're having so many shortages because a lot of captains retired. A lot of co-pilots became captains because they get better pay. Most of the time your flights getting canceled is because you don't have a co-pilot for that flight because they simply can't find someone.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, interesting. What does a co-pilot do compared to a captain?

Leonardo: They split the job pretty well. Usually, let's say you're doing a flight to Los Angeles and back the same day, usually, one person will fly the leg over and the other person will fly the flight back. Ultimately, the captain has the final say in important decisions. One person sits on the left side, one sits on the right side. It is a slightly different perspective. Overall, they have shared responsibilities. I suppose because the pay is different because the captain has more responsibilities. That's why they're not interchangeable. Yes, it's probably [unintelligible 00:09:37] at the end of the day.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for those insights, Leonardo. Here's Richard in Flushing, a retired bus driver. Richard, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Richard: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for everything you do. Yes, I'm actually retired nine years, so I didn't work during the pandemic, but I was an involuntary worker for the MTA. I worked for the private lines up until 2006 and it's the orange bus lines. They were private lines. They were subsidized by the city of New York. We went on strike in 2006 and the MTA took us over. It was one of Bloomberg's plans to make us civil servants. They were the most difficult people to work for. I had a lot of jobs in my life, but they were very, very difficult to work for.

Brian Lehrer: You said the MTA was very difficult to work for?

Richard: Oh yes, especially if you're working as a bus driver because they were constantly putting people on your bus to pretty much nitpick anything that you did. There's nobody who really likes working for the MTA. In my case, I had been working for the private lines for a number of years and they took us over. I had my pension and everything was vested with them, but my father had worked for the MTA for the subway lines and he warned me about it. The management is just very draconian and just hard to work for. That's all I can really say about that. The pay was good. The pay was adequate and the benefits are very good, but they went through a lot of people.

Brian Lehrer: The pandemic you think amped it up to the point where there are now

shortages, whereas, in the past, there might have just been a lot of disgruntled workers?

Richard: I don't know. I talked to a lot of friends that are still on the job and they found it to become more difficult. The pandemic, they were riding around for pretty much empty buses. They didn't mind that so much, but yes, it's just a rough place to work.

Brian Lehrer: Richard, thank you, and good luck in retirement. Ian in Essex County, a newly-hired pilot, I see. Ian, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Ian: Yes, so just following up on one of the flight attendants who said, yes, there's two different pilots. There's the captain and the first officer. Different areas of the airline industry. Regionals have an issue right now where they can't find enough captains, where majors can't find enough first officers. We have enough pilots. We just don't have enough qualified pilots. Me being a first officer, there's hundreds and hundreds of us, but you need two crews for the plane. Captains are leaving regionals to go to the majors because pay is better. Where you're flying to is better. That's causing a lot of travel disruption, just not having enough crews available.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Why now? Wasn't the structure that you described in the other caller described always this?

Ian: Well, the pilot shortage was always something I would talk about probably for the past 10 years. Hence, the reason I got into the industry, but it was always a myth or a rumor and then made during the pandemic for short [inaudible 00:13:16] have definitely sped up that process exponentially. People that had maybe four extra years of flying maybe bridged that gap. They retired early. Now, the number of retirements shot up very quickly.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you. How much do you think money is a factor? NPR had a story that said pilot training can cost $80,000 to $100,000 or more and financial aid doesn't cover it all.

Ian: Absolutely, it's a huge issue. The cost of entry. There are airlines right now who are creating their own flight training academies in order to try to help students along, but those will probably only account for maybe less than 10% of flight training. Pay after you finish training is not even good enough.

Brian Lehrer: Ian, thank you very much for your call. Another fact that we haven't mentioned, somebody's tweeting. So many altercations between flight attendants and passengers angry about having to mask earlier in the pandemic before some of the mandates were lifted. We're going to give our last 30 seconds to Leo in Westchester, who called in in our previous segment about lifting the mask mandate on buses and subways and giving us a retired MTA worker's perspective on that. Leo, we've got 30 seconds for you. Thanks for calling back. Why do you think people are not working in this industry and there are shortages?

Leo: I think there are shortages. I've been there for almost 37 years. Over that time, things got better and things got worse. One of the things that got worse was management and also the abuse by the public. Those are two reasons why I think they have problems retaining people.

Brian Lehrer: Leo, thank you for chiming in again. We appreciate it. Thanks to all of you who called today and all week on this series. As I said, teachers on Tuesday, healthcare workers on Wednesday. Of course, Monday was Labor Day. Thursday, police officers. Today, people in transportation for this Labor Day week call-in series on labor shortages in different places. I think we learned a lot from all of you. Thank you so much.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.