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.
NATS can't go bust, there are clauses in the transport bill to make sure it can't. If NATS is unable to pay its bills the courts are required to make an "Air Traffic Administration Order" (apologies for incorrectly calling it Aviation Administration above). This would effectively nationalise NATS at no cost to the Government. The Railway privitisation legislation contained similar clauses which were used to bring Railtrack back into public ownership.
That may seem an attractive proposition to some but do we really understand what that means to NATS staff particularly those not directly involved in the NERL Licence ? You may not like the current management but they have some vested interest in the future of NATS and hopefully in the last few years they've learnt a bit about the company. Do you really think an accountant appointed by the Secretary of State will be better ? Our pension curently enjoys some protection afforded to it by agreements made during the privitisation process, what status do those agreements have if an Air Traffic Administration Order is raised ?
TRANSPORT ACT 2000
SCHEDULES
Section 30.
SCHEDULE 1 Air traffic administration orders: general
Supplementary provisions of schemes
9 (1) A scheme may contain supplementary, consequential and transitional provision for the purposes of, or in connection with, any provision of the scheme.
(2) In particular a scheme may provide—
(e) that contracts of employment with the existing licence company are not to terminate and that periods of employment with the existing licence company are to count for all purposes as periods of employment with the new licence company;
Our pension forms part of our contract of employment so the wording of the act indicates that in the event of NATS going bust our final salary scheme must be guaranteed by the new owners...HMG.
After 1000 odd posts, it seems quite obvious to me that yes voters are going to continue to vote "yes" (God only knows why ) and the no voters will do similarly. We've heard all the arguments from both sides....without being prejudicial to the official Union ballot, can't we just have a simple yes/no vote on here now to see how the land lies??
NATS made an operating profit of £134.4 million on turnover of £742.5 million. That's a fairly hefty profit for a monopoly to make so I can understand the regulator's desire to lower our charges.
What happened to the profit? I got about £25 on my (company issue) of shares. How is NATS funding all of the changes going on, like Prestwick Centre, iFACTS etc? How is it going to fund all the future changes like iTEC and SESAR?
By ploughing the profit back into the company the share price increases to the benefit of our major shareholders. I assume they can count their NATS investment on their balance sheet?
For example, paying off loans early not only reduces debt but also raises the company's credit rating making borrowing cheaper and increasing future profits.
So the airline group's shares are worth more and the government will raise more money at the next stage of privatisation.
BTW has anyone checked my sums? Is the initial Airline Group investment of £7 million each now worth £22 million?
not the best CV, is it. Bizz energy and he is a non executive director of Northern Rock!!
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<H2>John Devaney - Chairman
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"My aim for BizzEnergy is to be the best energy supplier in Europe....John Devaney brings his top-level industry knowledge and experience...
</H2>
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Concern about the future of independent electricity suppliers grew yesterday after BizzEnergy went into administration and its 40,000 small and medium sized business customers were "sold" for the princely sum of £87.50 each.
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John Devaney brings his top-level industry knowledge and experience gained as Executive Chairman of Eastern Electricity to BizzEnergy...John is the Chairman of NATS Holdings Ltd (National Air Traffic Services) and Telent plc, formerly known as Marconi plc, Non-Executive Director of Northern Rock and Chairman of Ergo Finance LLP.
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Did NATS shed staff post-01? Or during previous downturns?
Yes it did. The composite solution under which NATS was rescued from administration required £170 million of savings made up of the pension holiday, postponed ATCO recruitment and support cost savings. A lot of people's jobs were hidden in that phrase support cost savings. They were all voluntary redundancies and most were jumping to avoid having to resign when we moved out of London but they were still real people who lost real jobs even if some people prefer to refer to them as dross.
Its never good to see people made redundant, but if it was necessary and do able then, then perhaps its time to look at that again. "The dross" as its now termed seem to be on the increase again, its a bit of an insult to those real people back then who had probably worked for the company a lot longer than some newly created jobs we seem to have now, to have lost their jobs only to now see the CTC car park bursting at the seams. before i pick up flak, I know there are many, skilled, professional, and needed individuals at CTC, i've worked with many of them, but ask any member of staff, including many managers who have dealings with CTC and visited there, they all come back saying the same, shocked at the number of people sitting around drinking coffee there. It is widley know about the issues people have had with the amount of emails, projects etc that come out that people can not see why other than was to give somebody something to do.I just think the company needs to see that the image that is created by CTC rightly or wrongly is effecting morale, and not helping people see why they should be expected to take the sacrifice to help the increasing pension costs, when one of the reasons any pensions scheme becomes costly is the more members that have to be paid for in it.
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depends upon how optimistic you are about future payrises
over the period of my career Im farely optimistic, ATCO's are not something you can advertise for in the local paper and start on monday we are a profession not a job. Recruitment issues, competing ASP's both in the UK in non-state units needing to pay more to stay alive and those abroad that are still state funded but may start to look to UK markets especially as rumour a fairly large provider might be looking to sell...mean simple supply and demand, the increasing complexity of the job, will all be factors on pushing pay rises higher, not maybe at this present time, but certainly in the next 15 years and certainly in my career.
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It's got nothing to do with opposing or supporting the management's proposals. I was referring to an ignorance of risk management even though so much of what we do in NATS is based upon it. Those familiar with risk management will recognise that sometimes the bad thing is so bad that you have to do something about it even if it isn't very likely. This may be one of those times.
and in risk management you look at all the risks, and the effects that mitigation of that risk may have, sometimes that mitigation alone creates a hazard elsewhere, and this is why people have taken such an interest in this, other than just because they are pissed at the broken trust. Risk one do nothing, company folds, pension out of window. However mitigation for that is do as asked by Mr baron and new risks created, such as danger to pension and conditions later on because they've now broke what we had, risk to me is that the reason I want a pension is so I can afford to retire, (maybe even earlyer before I become employed as "dross" or die and leave it all to the dogs home) and be in a position that I dont have a mortgage still due to relocations to the most expensive part of the country and the economic markets with house prices, no money to support my kids who got £50k student debts by then etc.... Unlike riskmanagement in NATS, peoples own risk management contains a lot more issues, and whether they are a company man or not, they work to survive, and when they do retire, they not going to give a crap about NATS they think of themselves only.
A crystal ball would be very handy to solve all these issues, those with just a few years left already can see what status they are in, and happy to take the managements mitigation in order to get what they got now, those who have more than the 15 years are in a harder place to make this decision lightly and have bigger concerns than NATS making lots of money.
If you check the current annual report and accounts for NERL, you'll see numbers of engineers, assistants and support grades have all fallen in the last year, while controllers have increased.
"junior/middle managers, secretarial and administrative staff collectively known as Management and Support Grades (MSGs)."
Interesting fact on ATCO numbers increasing while the other's decreasing. Another fact - it's a NATS employee pensions scheme, not an NATS ATCO pension scheme........we're all in this together so stop complaining about "CTC" (i.e. Non-unit) employees adding to the pension burden. A long serving engineer or administrator or researcher or accountant has the same rights to a full pension as any long serving ATCO.
Oh, and as for the comments sitting around drinking coffee, a number of us often work hard through a longer day than contractual hours to deliver the tools that the ATC units need to do their jobs better - so if we sometimes spend more time drinking coffee that's our prerogative
I personally drink tea......
Last edited by Radarspod : 5th November 2008 at 13:51.
Oh, and as for the comments sitting around drinking coffee, a number of us often work hard through a longer day than contractual hours to deliver the tools that the ATC units need to do their jobs better
That's all very commendable, but all the more reason for us, collectively, to tell management to try a little bit harder than just making the employees give up so much.
Your extra hours are akin to ATCOs doing extra sectors above minumum requirement. None of us gets paid for doing the extra hours/sectors etc, but it helps the company out immensly. A lot of goodwill has to do with the fact that NATS is a decent company to work for... continual erosion of Ts&Cs will make that less true and may mean people are less willing to work for nothing.
As for
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Another fact - it's a NATS employee pensions scheme, not an NATS ATCO pension scheme........we're all in this together so stop complaining about "CTC" (i.e. Non-unit) employees adding to the pension burden
I think you picked up the wrong vibe from 3miles' post. They were stating that there are people who are not fulfilling gainful employment that need to be binned as they are draining the pension fund unnecessarily.
Similarly there are some ATCOs who have been taken out of the OPs room through ineptitude and given 'support' jobs that could be culled to save some money.
As for the figures from NERL about increasing ATCO numbers - unfortunately they are not increasing at a fast enough rate, we are still short of capable ATCOs.
Also - do those figures double count or how do they work?? I.e. an ATCO working in OPs for instance on a 2 year placement - do they count as an office worker or as an ATCO????
I don't think I did miss the point of the post. I agree that even I have nearly choked on reading some VNs for strange posts that you wonder what they are for.
But from reading posts in this thread, it seems to me that a number of unit personnel come to CTC and see a lot of people that do not appear to be directly contributing to NATS income generation in the same way operations personnel do. The fact is that CTC has become one very large non-ops campus due to closures of West Drayton, Kemble Street and Spectrum House, not to mention moving a lot of non-ops employees out of Swanwick. So to the visiting unit personnel I could understand that it may seem like a big bunch of office types serving no purpose - but the total number is far less than when I joined NATS 10 years ago when personnel were scattered at a number of sites, each with own HR, accountants, security, adminstrators, managers, site engineers, safety managers, QA, etc, etc, etc.
Yes there are a lot of people at CTC that aren't in front of a radar screens, but the vast majority (i agree not all) are as important to NATS income generation as any operational personnel.
My apologies if this is coming across as a bit of a rant, but I read so much non-ops, engineer and CTC bashing on here I'm starting to lose my rag - which I don't want to do as i directly support operations.
Yes, it includes everyone. Support grades = MSG and PCG I guess.
Those people who work in areas that are under constant attack by many on here are the same ones who have been continually taking reductions in numbers, improving productivity and saving money so that the company can afford to pay so many AAVAs, among other things.
The arrogance and blatant selfishness that's dressed up so often on here as a sense of injustice no longer angers me... I find it amusing.
"These bean-counters in CTC having another meeting!!! OUTRAGEOUS!! We are in a credit crunch and we should be tightening our belt and cutting out this useless waste!!"
TRANSLATION: "I'm p*ssed off because I think every penny spent should be spent on me and me alone. I don't give a toss what is wasted, I just want more of everything because I like me very much"
The rant part of this isn't directed at the person who's question I answered initially - just in general to many users of this forum.
The arrogance and blatant selfishness that's dressed up so often on here as a sense of injustice no longer angers me... I find it amusing.
"These bean-counters in CTC having another meeting!!! OUTRAGEOUS!! We are in a credit crunch and we should be tightening our belt and cutting out this useless waste!!"
Totally with you here, highly amusing to read the arguments from ignorance. I particularly enjoy comments along the lines "There are groups in the CTC having meetings and I don't know what they do but they're no doubt just wasting time because they're all dross over there." The implication being that because the poster doesn't know what someone else does that person is a waster (or dross), showing off the posters ignorance
Just as an aside on the perceptions that most of the CTC staff sit around in Starbucks drinking coffee all day. NATS CTC accomodates a large number of staff (not all of whoms primary task require them to be there, its just the central place now everywhere else has closed) and Starbucks is relatively small so it will look busy when people have their breaks (shock horror! Staff who are not mandated to have breaks also have them! Eekkk!)
Additionally all of the offices (apart from the senior executives) are open plan. Its disruptive to other staff who are working at their desks if you decide to have a meeting of only 1 or 2 people at your desk. So Starbucks and the foyer area is a very good place to have these small meetings.
Its apparent from comments in this thread how little the operational staff are aware of the pressure to reduce staff in the non operational areas is. From posts being gapped to retirees not being replaced to contractors being let go to ATCO staff being squeezed to go back into Ops and so it goes on. But there is no reduction on the demand for resources to deliver everything thats expected.
BD
p.s. There are 'support' grades within the ATSA grading as well, ATC Technical & Support (T&S)
I agree entirelythat some people (mainly ATCOs) have not got a clue how much the majority of support staff do for the company and for the actual ATCOs. Doesn't mean that a proper 'time and motion' (in old money) study would not go amiss to make the company leaner though.
And if you are going to have a pop back at those detractors, at least do it with a proper argument...
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...improving productivity and saving money so that the company can afford to pay so many AAVAs, among other things...
The AAVAs come about because the OPs room needs a certain number of ATCOs sitting at certain positions at certain times of the day. AAVAs are used to make up the shortfall - AAVAs would be brought in regardless of whether office workers improved productivity or not!!
In fact AAVAs are actually preferred by the company to a certain degree because it is cheaper for management to use them than to employ the correct amount of ATCOs - AAVA's are more flexible as you can pick and choose which validation you want to call in, and they are non pensionable. AAVAs actually save the company money!
Could this NATS which employs hundreds of people to sit around drinking coffee all day really be the same company that exploits poor hard working ATCOs at every opportunity to make huge profits ? The fact is that most of those at CTC outside of a very small area in C block have been through time and motion study after time and motion study. Every year every job has to be justified and every year a further percentage saving has to be made.
Fortunately most of us at CTC have a good sense of humour. We certainly had a chuckle at the irony of controllers complaining about how hard they work on this thread whilst in another thread others were passing comment on the accomodation provided for them to sleep during their normal working hours.
) and the no voters will do similarly. We've heard all the arguments from both sides....without being prejudicial to the official Union ballot, can't we just have a simple yes/no vote on here now to see how the land lies??
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