SteveBBH
AAVA's are paid at a flat rate for the whoel shift, though there are 1/2 AAVA's as well (obviously for half the shift). There is no hourly rate on top it's a one of payment.
As for obscene, you keep picking me up on my use of over the top words!! That was again over the top, but an outsider may think the way our pay has risen dramatically over the past 8-10 years is obscene. It's well above inflation with some very good deals even recently. However before these rises we were not in receipt of a great wage (though I admit, we were not grossly underpaid!!)
I think it's a fair wage in that I do not think we are overpaid by any means - a fairly direct comparison would be to airline pilots... when you consider workloads etc I think an airline captain and above gets a much better renumeration than an ATCO at the top of the scale.
I also do not think we are greatly underpaid, it depends who you compare us to. For the responsibility we have, I do not think another £10k or £15k would be unreasonable.
It's extremely difficult to quantify - who do you compare yourself to? Firemen/Nurses/Armed Forces - we compare very favourably... Pilots/Salesmen/bankers (not management) - we compare badly to...
It is a very difficult thing to quantify and the best way to think of it is do you feel very underpaid or overpaid?
If not then it's probably a fair wage, the use of the word fair does not infer that it is correct, just in the ballpark