TOWTEAMBASE

point taken SAS, been out of the game for a while, would be good to get back in. im sure the "tools" have improved vastly

SAS MD80

Unfortunatly the role I have with the present handling agent is not in training, im front line again. The tools are still lacking, although im trying a one man battle to up the game and improve things in my section, not for me for us all.

spirit of the age

Dearest Grizzler, when a company like swissport has this many contracts(unlike other companies that operate at STN) there are bound to be issues with manning levels.Clearly servisair dont have the contracts leaving them with the reqiurement of making another 5 redundancies. One wonders how deep the cuts can go.Dont look to deeply into the mirror you may not like what you see.Apparently your company is now considering a 6 and 3 shift pattern to gain some flexibility

GRIZZLER

When a company like swissport has this many contracts...........Unlike some people, i can remember when servisair had ALL the contracts at stansted....if it landed, it was servisairs.....i hope servisair has learnt its lesson doing things on the cheap...ie RYANAIR .....

as for shift changes they are always looking to rob peter to pay paul........ i think they are very flexible now...men come in at 0300.....or stay on after midnight........at times the late shift just about bump into the early shift coming in.....how flexible can you get.....apart from living in the carpark.......itsgetting to the situation now there are more hours to cover then there are men to do it.....i think it might need more than a 6 and 3 shift.....maybe one man to come in every hour on the hour that should do it.

chrystall

That figure of 5.80 is a disgrace - my 16 yr old son earns 5.72 and hour in tesco's and no unsociable hours//inside warm and comfy. full time staff deserve a better deal given what they have to put up with!!

FrankLeeSpeakin

When I worked for a GHA about 12 years ago I think I was on about £3 an hour. There are a combination of factors that "conspire" to muck up a turnaround but I don't need to tell you lot that do I.
My company used cheap equipment, crappy uniforms, delapidated vehicles, poorly maintained radios.....
Add to this a really pisspoor airport owner with overcrowded and understaffed and inadequate numbers of security posts (there was no separate staff post so we had to excuse ourselves to the front of passenger queues) and what you get is..well crappyness multiplied.
Also while I was there the station head called us all into a meeting and declared we were all going to be doing the pushbacks as well - previously done by dedicated airline crews.
His parting words were "If you don't want to do it, you don't have to" - ie, we can always get another monkey to replace you, and curiously no mention of quid-pro-quo pay adjustment for our new extra "voluntary" duties.
T'was ever thus and I am well out of it now.

FrankLeeSpeakin

PS there is a thread for pilots to compare pay.
What a good idea it would be if dispatchers could do the same here so we can compare the lot of workers at the likes of Servisair, Menzies, Aviance etc etc

ReadyToGo

I had to smile at Grizzlers comment about "living in the car park". In the days when I was a rampie, there were times when I knew people who did just that on occasions. Finish an early, nip out for a bite to eat, then put their down in his car for an hour or so, then straight on the ramp again for a few hours. Or finish at 2am, sleep in our minibus, and wake up at 5 to cover the first wave of departures, then go home at 8am.

I did it myself on occasions to cover someone on another crew. But by the time I left, attitudes and comradship at the company were so low, you were lucky if any of the non-seasonal staff were prepared to stay more than 20mins. In fact, there was actually animosity between crews at times.

One of the final straws in my "career" was being left on my own, on a 738 turnaround, because the crew I had finished at 1800. Literally walked off the job... why? Because they couldn't guarantee they'd get paid for the extra 25mins to get the flight out.

Sad, but all too common


RTG!