Salaries and other perks will be first in the crosshairs of management I would suggest. Ultimately any large business is run by accountants for one reason - to make profit. NATS is duty bound to show itself as a good investment and to return profits. Simplest way to achieve this when your income stream has taken a hit is to pass the problem onto the workers by reducing company costs - if this means redundancies and reduced T&Cs then that is what will happen. All this teamwork talk will soon be shown for what it was - a box ticking exercise by HR managers to show that they "care" about their workers. Newsflash - they don't. And this applies through all large companies in case anyone thinks I'm having an unfair pop at NATS, its standard practise, the problem is that this is probably the first time that many NATS workers have been exposed to this harsh reality and they can't really understand it. Those of us that have worked both for NATS and other ANSPs have maybe more real life experience than an ATCO that has been sheltered in the NATS bubble for their entire career.
I have many contacts both inside and outside NATS. For as long as I remember, NATS was always the benchmark that other ATCOs aspired to, NATS T&Cs, NATS pensions, NATSAGS covering a multitude of payments that would make others eyes water, and yes, the NATSAG that covered redundancy was unbelievable. I recall NATS ATCOs telling me the amounts they were getting in voluntary redundancy some years ago even though they were planning to retire within 6 months anyway! The amount of seemingly disposable money was unbelievable, when times were good it probably wasn't a big deal - however times have changed. To steal a line - winter is coming.