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.
Hmm perhaps our esteemed moderator's choice of words was a tad suspect, and I am certain no offence was intended.
How on earth could you be certain that there was no offense intended? Unless that poster has the keyboard version of tourettes syndrome they fully knew and intended to cause offense with their choice of words.
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Join Date: Jul 1997
Location: Europe
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I would report this post to a moderator but you appear to be one. As the parent of a child with learning difficulties I find this particularly offensive.
I have amended the words to something which could be seen as less offensive, since that was not the drive of my post. My point was that people who put in 50 hours or more a week (and seem proud of the fact) and are doing so without any reward, are (in my opinion) fools. Not only to themselves, but to the rest of the staff in NATS, because they are now creating a working pattern which can be seen as the norm.
How can you expect a union to work for improved terms and conditions for everyone in NATS if people regularly work excessive and (under the European Work Directive) possibly illegal hours ?? You are spoiling it for everyone else, regardless of the product you are delivering. If nothing else, what do you think continued excessive working hours will be doing to your health and family life ? Imagine you work 50 hours in a week and then run off the road on the way home because you are too tired. Or you make a mistake in your work, because you are fatigued. I don't see such people as heroes, pulling the company out of the mire, by putting in an extra shift to get things done. I see them as a potential liability .. to themselves and their colleagues. Whilst working in the non op environment might not be immediately safety critical, you can have an effect on the safe operation if you are providing something while fatigued. It is well known that errors creep in when a human is involved in that condition.
If the hours need to be put in to get something done, and are excessive, then there are several possible explanations. For example ..
There is not enough resource, but then again there's no pressure on NATS to provide it since they seem to have people who will work for free overtime anyway.
The person doing the job is not up to it and has fallen behind or underestimated the task (or maybe their manager has). But again, NATS have no need to worry as someone will be along to work excessive hours shortly.
The pride and professionalism to get a job done is laudable .... but it should never compromise the need for NATS to provide sufficient staff, who work legal contracted hours, and are suitably rewarded.
Maybe the whistle should be blown on the NATS managers and individual staff who flout and break European law on working times ?? Anything over 48 hours (including overtime) in a given 7 day period is illegal. Perhaps the Health and Safety Executive should audit NATS NIBS records, having been tipped the nod A few court appearances might sharpen the minds and improve things for everyone.
__________________ PPRuNe Radar ATC Forum Moderator
If the hours need to be put in to get something done, and are excessive, then there are several possible explanations. For example ..
There is not enough resource, but then again there's no pressure on NATS to provide it since they seem to have people who will work for free overtime anyway.
Where do you find this resource, which has to have a particular, very specialised skill set at short notice?
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The person doing the job is not up to it and has fallen behind or underestimated the task (or maybe their manager has).
Underestimation is often a large part of the problem. Its often impossible to know how difficult and how long something will be to undertake unless you've done exactly the same thing before. Its not unusual to hit unforeseen snags, so estimating hours is extremely difficult.
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The pride and professionalism to get a job done is laudable .... but it should never compromise the need for NATS to provide sufficient staff, who work legal contracted hours, and are suitably rewarded.
I agree but the specialised staff required don't exist. We cannot just magic them up. Think along the lines of ATCO training. Also most management grades don't qualify for overtime payments, have a look at the staff manual.
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Maybe the whistle should be blown on the NATS managers and individual staff who flout and break European law on working times ?? Anything over 48 hours (including overtime) in a given 7 day period is illegal.
Perhaps the Health and Safety Executive should audit NATS NIBS records, having been tipped the nod
The records would show, assuming people are booking their time properly. In my experience managers are very aware of their duty of care to staff. However as I said before you may think you have ample resource for the job but suddenly hit a snag, bringing an extra help is impossible at short notice and the job MUST be done on time or you hit the soft issues I mentioned in an earlier post.
Rock, hard place.
bringing an extra help is impossible at short notice and the job MUST be done on time or you hit the soft issues I mentioned
Problem is, NATS have come to rely on it's limited resource, because every time there is a problem, the professional staff (Operational and Project staff) work miracles to sort it out.
All very well for the "company", which has no incentive to do anything about the lack of staff / resources etc etc. No so good for the employees.
Perhaps NOW is the time then to exercise the driest powder in town?
but surely it should be nats higher managements responsibility to ensure we have enough qualified staff to enable the company to function.
whether it be atcos, atsas, engineers airspace designers etc HR should ensure we have sufficient staff. expecting aavas, or even worse unpaid overtime from their employees, and then having the audacity to try and cheat them out of their well earned pensions is not acceptable.
try not to loose sight and bicker on petty personal issues and slights, what matters is all our futures as NATS employes with a decent pension to live on when we retire, and at least a cost of living payrise each year
United we stand but divided we fall is very sound advice but difficult to achieve when there are so many groups involved.
In my opinion, Atcos are understaffed, atsas about right. There always seems to be a few engineers about so i guess they are there or thereabouts, but there are WAY too many office workers in this company. I don't think it would hit the ocmpany that hard if we were to CUT the number of office workers in HALF and make them work as hard as atsas/engineers and atcos.
People seem to think that doing an hours work followed by a half hour break is easy work, but when you think of that time when you are working, it is 100% concentration sometimes with constant talking/decision making and planning. There is never time to click save and go for a quick moccachino with a dash of vanilla. No minesweeper, cheking of emails and rarely non work conversations. certainly no radio in the background.
I know this is how offices work across the country and probably abroad aswell but it strikes me as inefficient. if we cracked the whip a bit we could cut the wage bill, pension liability and number of meetings drastically.
Where do you find this resource, which has to have a particular, very specialised skill set at short notice?
BDiONU
You are correct, however the company’s upper management is negligent and reckless in that they demand this, that and the next thing without any thought on impact.
What is going to be the next 'big' project? IFACTS is not on time, TCNE airspace has failed, Central has failed, so guess what, lets bring in TC CAPITAL and do a major change in operations in 9 months - including re-arranging an OP room (TC) that was not future proofed when it was commissioned, less than a year ago.
This company fire fights- that is evident in most things it does... as a company we rush head-long from the next 'big thing' to the latest 'next big thing' once the first - 'big thing' has failed. We do not listen to the experts, for instance the call for enough support staff for the (New) Central/Capital simulations has been compromised... yet one of the reasons we are doing this latest project is because we did not resource the original project properly.
We can't afford pensions, but we can spunk 2 or 3 million quid on a project, then when it fails, neglect to learn from the lessons learned.
The company is managed by to many yes men who bend over and kiss ass whilst telling the upper management who have not got a clue about real life ATC that we will do this and we will do that.
We would be properly resourced if we did not continue to shaft ourselves by saying we can do this or we can do that.
NATS needs a reality check - PPRuNe Radar is utterly correct - why should you or goldfrog or anyone else work long hours because management or some lily livered yes man has said we can manage?
Proper resourcing comes from being realistic about what can be achieved... projects will often go awry and need extra manpower/hours thrown at them - we should have a contingency for this... not expect some poor fool who has pride in his/her job to do 50 hours a week.
Barron drives off in his nice company Aston Martin while those below get shafted.
BDiONU - you are ex-RAF - even though the junior service, you must be used to a hell of a lot better management practices than NATS have.
Fire fighting is required from time to time - with NATS it's made inevitable by unrealistic goals and aims.
But hey, lets do it anyways and in the meantime let NATS screw us out of our pension.
Question - so why don't we give NATS a donation of 5% of our salary every month? Ridiculous idea? It's less than what people do when they work 50 hours or so a week for nothing.
All very well for the "company", which has no incentive to do anything about the lack of staff / resources etc etc. No so good for the employees.
The day the AAVA agreement went live was the day that atcos shot themselves in the foot in that respect.
What incentive for management to staff to the supposed numbers when we are queuing up to prostitute ourselves?
I do smile at the "sack half the office workers" type posts. I don't know enough to know whether or not we really are over or understaffed in such positions but I know for sure the complaints that would very quickly be showing up on here when claims or AAVA payments and the like were deemed to not be being paid quickly enough etc etc.
BDiONU - you are ex-RAF - even though the junior service, you must be used to a hell of a lot better management practices than NATS have.
Yeah the junior service, we never had traditions, they were just bad habits When I starting working for NATS 8 years ago I'd have agreed with you about management. However since PPP things have picked up considerably and you do hear of incompetent people being sacked or moved on. Would never have happened in yea bad olde days.
So if all these office workers that bdionu claims have all this knowledge not only about our current systems but also the new technologies, or new ideas from other ats proivders are employed by nats are as great as he claims then why the hell are we still employing these monkeys who turn up in the ops room every now and again with no fking idea what the hell is going on, asking all kinds of rubbish, and having the most primitive idea of an air traffic operation ever. even less so than my wife
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I know for sure the complaints that would very quickly be showing up on here when claims or AAVA payments and the like were deemed to be not being paid quickly enough etc etc
What, like June's overtime that I'm still waiting for. God know's, o/t (not even an AAVA!) is as rare as rocking horse sh!t round these here parts.
Oh, and rumour has it that an entire unit's OJTI team wasn't paid for their services in the last quarter.
Mind you, I can't make up my mind whether to call for less admin staff........or more!
and rumour has it, well its actually been confirmed that mister 'i'm in charge of the new capital/central TC airspace' has informed us all that it will be solely staffed with AAVA's.
how the hell can you staff a sector like that? i know of many waiting to hand in that sector as its staffed by people above MUR anyway when this crap kicks in.
maybe spend a few more million on it and not learn from it... management again in their own magic 'it will work' bubble and never listening to us.
Technically, all NATS full-time staff are contracted to 40 hour weeks.
The combination of arrogance and ignorance displayed by some of my (operational) 'colleagues' never ceases to amaze me. You whine about everyone else but you being useless and a drain on resources as they know nothing about what you do... while showing quite clearly you lack any understanding of what they do, what their role is and what skills and experience they bring to the company.
This is a large company and there are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly valuable employees in a whole range of areas within it. Not just on the Ops room floor.
Funny how any discussion about money always brings out the worst in some people.
I'll happily go back to a 40 hour gross roster. But when the bleeper goes whilst I'm half way through a dinner break to split the sector I'll be able to decline the request to get back to the sector. I suspect regulations would be more common than they are now.
Stilll sometimes it's a pleasure to leave the Swanwick food half finished.
I would challenge people at band 2 units who moan about their salaries being lower than those of their band 5 counterparts to put in a transfer request and come and validate at a band 5 unit. There is plenty of demand for ATCO's, both approach and area at Swanwick.
A few court appearances might sharpen the minds and improve things for everyone.
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