ATC IssuesA place where pilots may enter the 'lions den' that is Air Traffic Control in complete safety and find out the answers to all those obscure topics which you always wanted to know the answer to but were afraid to ask.
The astronomical rise in the price of oil and gas and the fall in the value of the £ mean that the inflation currently in the British economy is all imported inflation.
If we were all given a below inflation pay rise then less people would be able to afford to fly or go on holiday.
Strangling the cash flow in the UK is not going to help any UK industry.
i do hope sincerely that we do not get people saying that 'should we really be going for a pay rise at a time when the airlines are all struggling'.
as far as i'm concerned, they can (insert expletive) off. When we we struggling with 2% pay rises under goverment ownership,whilst those in the private sector were getting double that or more, we didnt hear a word from the nay sayers. As for upsetting public opinion, MP's have voted to keep their lavish expenses, 2nd homes, increased pension terms and conditions, all flying in the face of public opinion. They still did it, effectively saying 'screw you mr&mrs joe public, i'm gonna look after myself'.
Think its about time we followed their example
Must say that I agree completely with the above statement. It appears to me that those at the top of the food chain be it MP's or corporate heads still get cracking pay rises when those further down have to split whats left between them. Besides, why the hell are MP's so well off??? all they do is represent us (supposedly!), its not as if they do anything useful..
How can companies justify the pay rises of their leaders?? Remember, these folks will get large bonuses as well so how come they get a silly% pay rise??
i don't really understand this much so can someone correct me if i'm wrong.
They are proposing that they will cap any annual pay rise at RPI + 0.5%.
You still get incremental pay rises every year. (ie moving up the scale)
These bits seem reasonable, i wasn't aware that they gave us pay rises of higher than this. However it does say that they will "cap" any pay rises at this it doesn't say they'll give us anywhere near this.
The new scheme for new entrants better be a good one otherwise it'll be very unfair sitting next to someone doing exactly the same job but with a vastly inferior pension scheme.
The Cap refers to PENSIONABLE pay. What this means that if the annual pay rise is RPI + 3% the only RPI + 0.5% of that will be contributing to your pension pot.
In recent history, our pay rises have not really gone much over RPI + 0.5% anyway, nor do I expect they will be more than that in the near future.
Chances are that if they did... Say we got RPI + 1%, I would imagine the 0.5% that would be non-pensionable would end up being paid as a lump sum. Nice and simple.
In general... It looks like a complete cave-in by the TUs. They are now proposing to us the same proposal NATS made to them that they threatened strikes over.... How does that work?
In general... It looks like a complete cave-in by the TUs. They are now proposing to us the same proposal NATS made to them that they threatened strikes over.... How does that work?
That's where "working together" gets us.
This crap has got to stop, otherwise a I feel a vote of no confidence in our union reps is called for
on the contrary, i would have thought they would have come up with quite a good pay offer to 'grease the wheels'. one small but substantial one off payment to help save millions over 15 years.
Although there is a definite reason to pay some ATCO's more at certain units than others, the banding system is very flawed. The scoring of a unit doesnt really reflect sometimes what that unit does, it would be a bit like scoring an airport on pax numbers against aircraft movements. higher pax numbers doesnt always mean higher movements. Issues in sense of the service, complexity of the airspace etc that some of these units provide isnt always fully taken into account. There are some bandings that are based on history rather than true workload, approach atco's that are now providing the service from TC, whichin fact are now only radar rated other than when they were tower and approach rated are now bands higher for doing the same job or as i just said in fact less.
But the biggest issue is that although when banding came out it may have been ok, following pay rise after pay rise as resulted in the gap becoming more between the units. When it was introduced a difference between Bands could have been 5k it is in some cases now over 20k. A percentage of more is more...The bandings need re addressing, they need to see that if we continue along the vain of just giving percentage pay rises with no actually changes to the band levels then this gap is going to become enormous.
You have a situation now where a Watch manager/deputy earns less money than a Joe bloggs controller, with less ratings, working at a unit that is almost comparitvely as busy/complex as the unit they are at.
in fact any of the NSL approach/tower units other than manchester, all the watch managers and deputies earn less than a luton/stansted/thames approach only controller.
Not the best selling point is it when we try to encourage people to do more than just be an ATCO, not really a career development pusher.
Im for banding but please make it fair, we dont just need a percentage pay rise this year we need the whole scales looking at, need to address the fairness off the bandings, and look at better renumiration for those that are in Watch/deputy Management posts.
Well put! I do not expect to be paid the same as bigger units but nearer to their wage without the huge gulf.
Manc tower may soon suffer when they no longer hang onto the coat tails of their area unit when they move, or more realistically when they finally lose their contract which haemorrhages money daily.
A suggestion would be to give the lower band units a spine point or 2 to narrow the bands but seeing as there would be nothing in that for the Band 4/5 units, who have the majority vote and look after themselves, then you haven't got a cat in hells chance.
Nothing will ever change on this Banding bolocks.I mentioned this to our local union rep and was told if you don't like it,then leave. So that's what I recommend to people thinking of working abroad,elsewhere etc.
Although people say the pension/pay/banding issue isn't linked,it is.People are waiting to see what happens,and if NATS are really going to shoot themselves in the foot on pensions.You have to look at the overall package.
If NATS destroy the reason that most people are loyal,THE PENSION,then people will look at units closer to where it suits them.No reason to work for NATS anymore.Band 2 pay is about what you'll get outside roughly,but with less traffic,further south if you hail from that area,and even with some a pension scheme.
We have lost about the same ratio of controllers to Dubai as Heathrow has.We will lose a lot more.
Guys at lower band units....I say this not to provoke, but rather to get your views...shouldn't you be more worried about this pension cr*p going through? If it does, theres a good chance NSL will get sold and banding issues will become an irrelevance. Like I said, not intended to provoke, just interested in your views
To be honest i'm so fed up at being screwed in NATS that nothing the useless union tell me will make me a yes vote. In my briefing they admitted that Banding was a mistake and was a factor in creating this pension problem. Makes you feel good when you did not get a good deal out of Banding, stuck near the bottom of the pile, but now need to help bail the fat cats out and stick together. Thanks for that. Also NATS has too many 'support' staff and middle management creating work for themselves on higher wages no doubt than the guys risking their licences and keeping the public safe. From a pure salary point of view if my airport was no longer in NATS I would still get the same pay anyway as a lot of non-NATS airports pay simillar to Band 1/2 units anyway with far less traffic, and maybe I could live closer to home.
Airports need to fight now for the pension or it will go anyway when we are sold in a few years.
And it's a no from me for that reason too!
And dividing the workforce,NO..
In my briefing i summed it up that this pension issue makes NSL so much easier to sell off, their response, "no one would want to buy in with the new pensions anyway with a underlying rate of 30ish% " Paying that underlying rate won't last as people leave and in a few years NSL will be prime fillet on the slab.
Mr777,
At our Band 2 unit there seems to be a tiredness of this pension issue.Don't forget that we have had these issues for over 15 years,so anything that comes from Prospect/Nats means that we are getting screed.
People has left the union in disgust.The difference with the pension issue is that this is the first time management are taking on the Band4/5 units.Before the lower band units got it,to keep the bigger units happy.The workforce was divided years ago.
Since the Banding process our traffic has exploded.Yet we have got nothing.
I have had quite a few people talk about working elsewhere,but they always said that the pension was the deciding factor.Well that looks a gonner now,even if we vote no.Also our pensions are already lower because of the huge pay gulf.
I have worked outside Nats and I found other employers fine.They paid you at the end of the month,or contract.In the second case,about 3 times what Nats were paying at the time.However they certainly didn't keep moving the goalposts every 5 mins like Nats.If NSL was sold maybe things might improve.There is a huge shortage of experienced Tower/Approach controllers,and the new NSL will have to staff these units.They will have to train there own (no college anymore ?),or do a Serco;poach.Just look at the ads in Flight.There are vacancies everywhere,and one even has a final salary pension scheme.
In the meantime people are past the fighting stage here,and are looking at what suits themselves.The union certainly isn't of any use.
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