Vueling-Clickair Pilot Seniority Lists

[Jimmy Hoffa Rocks]

Regarding the Vueling-Clickair merger and the merging of the Seniority lists.

Podemos seguir en Castellano, claro.

I understand that the Administrative Seniority List ( Date of the signing of contract by pilot and management ) is the one that is going to be used.
For the merger all Vueling and Clickair pilots.

Therefore most of the Vueling pilots will be on the top of the new seniority.

From sources fairly close to the merger. One of the reasons that the merger discussions have gone on so long is that Lara did not want to give up everything to Iberia. Maintaining Vuelings identity.The merging of the pilots may have been part of this.

( Nefinsa )Clickair has demonstrated antiquated dictatorial management style in the past.

For example pilots flying 10 days straight and afraid to speak up or they will be fired, this is not safe. Certain pressure on pilots not to AOG aircraft.

Iberia needs to be distanced from the new Vueling CLickair company.
If Iberia is seen to be too close to the new Vueling-Click then there would be problems with the Madrid base.

The Vueling name is going to be used. Legally that could be part of the basis for the pilots maintaining their status and seniority



In the event of a legal fight the administrative date of one's signing contract is valid in Spain.Should the new company not respect the administrativev dates or date of contract signing then the new company Vueling-Click would be obliged to payout to invalidate the original contract signing date. The payout to Vueling pilots would be a lot of Euros. For this reason the new Vueling will
respect



While Vueling started in 2004 the pilots

The Vueling pilots have the Seniority list definitions in their Yellow Book.

[GatoVolador]

I understand that the Administrative Seniority List ( Date of the signing of contract by pilot and management ) is the one that is going to be used.
For the merger all Vueling and Clickair pilots.

Therefore most of the Vueling pilots will be on the top of the new seniority.

Yes, probably. As neither Vueling nor Clickair have complex seniority scales regulated by labour agreements, they will simply take the pilots of Clickair and insert them in the list of Vueling according to the day that they signed their contract. It makes sense.

From sources fairly close to the merger. One of the reasons that the merger discussions have gone on so long is that Lara did not want to give up everything to Iberia. Maintaining Vuelings identity.The merging of the pilots may have been part of this.

I don't know, but I think that Lara is much more worried about how many shares of the company will receive each partner, how the board will take the decisions, which brand it's going to be kept, etc. etc. than anything regarding the employees. Both firms have flexible workers and it seems that the merger of the employees is not a huge problem, as it is the case in Iberia, Spanair, etc. I could be wrong, but I'm a bit surprised. The policy with the employees seems more like a "we will merge: like it or not" than anything else.

( Nefinsa )Clickair has demonstrated antiquated dictatorial management style in the past.

For example pilots flying 10 days straight and afraid to speak up or they will be fired, this is not safe. Certain pressure on pilots not to AOG aircraft.

Is it normal? I thought that Vueling and Clickair had very similar labour conditions. None have a really good reputation on the employees side, do they?

Iberia needs to be distanced from the new Vueling CLickair company.

They will.
Maybe our friend pppilot will disagree, but my opinion is that Clickair was managed by Alex Cruz with a complete autonomy. This has not to be confused with some private contracts signed by the five shareholders of Clickair, who decided the creation of Clickair under some rules (for instance, having a fleet of A320s is not a decision taken by Clickair but rather part of the creature, since Iberia put some capital not in € but in aircrafts). But this is previous to the first management team of Clickair.

What I'm trying to say is that Iberia followed some goals with Clickair, and they probably achieved some of them, but not through a non-autonomous management, but rather because the existence of Clickair itself was enough to achieve some of these goals.

I don't see Iberia dictating instructions to Alex Cruz.

Of course, Iberia has a presence in the board and they can control some important decisions, but not that much.

In the case of Vueling, it's going to be the same. They want:
- a profitable short-haul point-to-point airlne
- a cheap airline able to fill the gaps of the demand (this makes unprofitable to other carriers to come)
- maximized dividends to recover the investment as soon as possible. Vueling has to be a money-pump.
- fighting against Spanair and EasyJet, but this is going to be part of the game, not an instruction given by Iberia. Why? Well, just because Vueling operates cheaper than Spanair and they are also interested in a diminished Spanair to control as much market share as they can. Iberia takes advantage of this, but this doesn't imply that they command the managers of Vueling/Clickair.
- securing Vueling as a client of Iberia Maintenance and Iberia Handling? just to keep some valuable assets on the ground at significant airports, particularly BCN. I'd say "yes". Even if Vueling signed a contract with AGA to outsource the production of passengers handling, I'm not sure that this is going to remain unchanged in the future. It seems that Vueling decided not to hire again Logistair because of their bad financial situation. But this could be changed. I know it's not the same, but Clickair recently (by february? march?) changed the uniforms of their FAs. One could have said: "why on earth do they change it now, if the uniform is from october 2006 - so just a bit more than one year, which is not much - and they will merge with Vueling and take the indentity and uniforms of the other airline?". Here it could be similar. I guess that AGA will hire the employees with "obra y servicio" contracts so that if Vueling ever cancelled the contract with AGA, the handling company can also do the same with the employees devoted to perform handling tasks to Vueling. I don't really see a close relation between Vueling contracting AGA and Vueling not contracting Iberia as passengers handling agent in the future.
- some marketing agreement with Iberia, just to have IB5xxx coded flights operated by Vueling. This is good for Vueling, as they can access Amadeus (& others) at no cost, and it's also good for Iberia as they can keep iberia.com selling tickets on Vueling flights, keep a marketing presence in BCN, etc. Maybe (I hope it) Vueling will join Iberia Plus too, who knows.

If Iberia is seen to be too close to the new Vueling-Click then there would be problems with the Madrid base.

This is not going to happen if and only if SEPLA agrees with Iberia some boundaries. Of course you may think that setting boundaries to Vueling is having Iberia too much involved in Vueling. OK, I accept that. But... what if the condition asked by SEPLA was "All right, Iberia, we accept Vueling flying point-to-point flights from/to MAD, but we want you to sign that Iberia will never use Vueling as a feeder, so that Iberia will always have a production in MAD because of the hub". This sounds reasonable and it's something that Iberia can agree with SEPLA (avoiding any conflicts between Iberia and Vueling in MAD) without affecting the autonomy of Vueling.

The reasoning is that up to now, Vueling has been growing freely in MAD, and even if Iberia was affected (for sure), they managed to keep the majority of the passengers and they even increased the production volumes in MAD. As IB would receive cash from both IB and Vueling, maybe they don't care if Vueling competes against Iberia, because both carriers can have their own space (even more if SAS ever decided to partially pull Spanair out of MAD in order to concentrate in the T-South at BCN). I'm speculating, but this sounds at least reasonable.

The Vueling name is going to be used. Legally that could be part of the basis for the pilots maintaining their status and seniority

In the event of a legal fight the administrative date of one's signing contract is valid in Spain.Should the new company not respect the administrativev dates or date of contract signing then the new company Vueling-Click would be obliged to payout to invalidate the original contract signing date. The payout to Vueling pilots would be a lot of Euros. For this reason the new Vueling will
respect

Our labour law (Estatuto de los Trabajadores) say that when "firm A" buys "firm B", then firm A substitutes B as the employes of the employees, but having to respect their labour conditions: salary, seniority, and so on.
The alternative could be Vueling sacking all the Clickair pilots and re-hiring them just to make them access Vueling as new employees with no seniority at all.

This could happen (it's cheap: they have to pay 45 days per year worked with a limitation of 42 months of salary, which is nothing given that Clickair pays low salaries and that the most senior pilot was hired less than two years ago... so the payoff would be, in the worse case, no more than roughly speaking two months of salary) but...

- Why would they do this? I haven't seen the employees protesting against the merger. They will probably accept (I don't care if they like it or not: they will just take it "as given") their new seniority status in the new list and that's it.

- Would this be legal? I'd need to check it a bit, but it sounds a bit strange... Firing to hire back... It's quite "dirty".

- Why would Vueling do this if this is a cost and they don't want extra costs?

- Why would Vueling do this if almost all the planes will be taken by the new company so that "nobody" will loose the job? (Vueling already adjusted the fleet... so... I don't expect too much extra capacity reductions.)

I'm confused. Why are you focusing in this point?

[ppppilot]

Puesto que no creo que los pilotos de VLG, o Click tengan problemas en comprender, prefiero escribir en la lengua de Cervantes. Con todos mis respetos para las demas, es una de las lenguas más lógicas y ricas en matices que existen y prefiero aprovechar y difundir estas virtudes.
Aquí hay algo que huele a rancio. Huelo como un tufillo de prepotencia anticuada y egoista, que tanto daño hace a esta profesión. Gracias a las peleas que se dan en nuestro colectivo y a la desunión que producen, la gente está hoy en día pagandose las habilitaciones. Si hubiera una especie de sindicato del metal, aplicado a los pilotos, no nos iria tan mal.

I understand that the Administrative Seniority List ( Date of the signing of contract by pilot and management ) is the one that is going to be used.

Esta frase parece una afirmación, no una pregunta o una consulta. Lo que lleva implicito un deseo.
Como empecemos así, la guerra, el mal rollo y el chanchulleo están servidos.
Podría ser que como la mayoría de acciones es de Click, los pilotos de Click digan que los de VLG a la cola. Podrían ser muchas otras barbaridades. Pero si teneis un poco de cabeza y de honor, arreglareis vustras propias diferencias sin que salgan los problemas de la habitación en la que se discuta y saldreís dando la imagén de que os vais a comer el mundo y no el mundo a vosotros.
Si de mi dependiera, sería tipo cremallera y el numero uno me lo jugaría a suertes.
Pretender poner a todo un colectivo a tu cola, son reminiscencias trasnochadas de las patochadas de algún soberbio, iluminado de Iberia, que espero que algún día no vea recompensado con la misma moneda en una fusión con la BA o similar. Lo deseo por el bien de sus compañeros, puesto que el que opina así debe ser lo que desea para él mismo.

[Jimmy Hoffa Rocks]

Mr. Gato Volador and ppp

Thank you for your posts. Good posts both of them.

I am focusing on this point as I am a Vueling pilot. I have no problem with the Clickair pilots.


The market and economy is about to turn down. Seniority is important as jobs will be cut. Could lose my job.
Seniority will be the difference to whether I have a job. I am not going to give it freely to a pilot with 800 hours who is the son of an Iberia Captain working in Clickair.

Also There will be a lot of Spanair pilots on the market looking for work. Things are not going to be pretty in October/November as the price of oil rises.Vueling has started cutting earlier. Clickair followed Vueling's lead in fleet reduction.The new Vueling will go under Vueling's AOC.

Mr. Gato,

A very important mergers and acquisitions firm apparantly has been brought in. I agree it is all about creating value,

" Studies have shown that mergers have failure rates of more than 50 percent. One recent study found that 83 percent of all mergers fail to create value and half actually destroy value. This is an abysmal record. What is particularly amazing is that in polling the boards of the companies involved in those same mergers, over 80 percent of the board members thought their acquisitions had created value"



I only expect what is fair. What is not right is Clickair's management putting out false propaganda about Clickair's future in the merger. Especially rumours about flight operations as the they are far away from that level. They have lost credibility by playing games.

Therefore what is binding and morally right is the date of the signing of your contract.

What is the truth in this whole affair ?

I say to the Clickair pilots do not listen to the hype and propaganda.

Vueling started in 2004. Vueling has a Comite de Empresa.

What do you think is the right thing if you were a judge ?

Mr. Gato you said you would check it, please do.

The new Vueling does not even have a COO, yet. They are not at all close to the flight operations level even if Iberia will be majority.

Alex Cruz is not guaranteed the job.





PPP

" Como empecemos así, la guerra, el mal rollo y el chanchulleo están servidos."

Who started this war ?

Carlos Munoz was removed to avoid war.

Let us recall Clickair started to put Vueling out of business.

What both Clickair and Vueling pilots need to do is unite and be united and fall into the trap of fighting against each other. The pilots need to take the best of both companies and not have any fear.

As JFK said, "You have nothing to fear but fear itself "

You know whom this benefit.

Compare as an entrepeneur Vueling and Clickair.

Vueling started from nothing a bunch of people in England said " lets start an LCC." Yes conditions were bad for the employees but it was an independant idea.

Now compare.

Clickair existed only to put Vueling out of business. Since Clickair started the pilot conditions improved for Vueling pilots.

[bcnhog]

Flying Feline (a.k.a. GatoVolador) is diplomatic as always in his response, but obviously reacts in a similar way to 4Pilot (PPPPilot) who is more direct and clearly questions the post by a new member, JHR (Jimmy Hoffa Rocks).

I agree, guys - quick post, new member, one-sided and looking to pick a fight. Won't work that way - never does.

On one side you have a company which has been under financial threat for a while, with constant management changes and with an increasingly "lower consumer marketing exposure" (sorry, heard that one last week at the airport); on the other side, you have a new starter, with older planes, with a questionable product, but apparently (they say...) with the best punctuality (does that mean a good operations structure?) and a very solid father (or cousin, or whatever). Sorry, can't see how JHR's not-illogical but rather-suspicious theory will hold..

As usual, just IMHO.

[ppppilot]

Three in a row...Bingo