Originally Posted by
Tom Sawyer
The ALAE as it was did a sterling job of maintaining our status in the face of some very strong opposition and gave us a voice quite high up, and I think since it rolled into Prospect the availability of resources to help members increased, but they have let our profile and representation, especially with CAA/EASA be diluted - well I never hear much of it anyway, not even a newsletter covering aircraft engineering aspects and articles as per "Tech Log" did.
Would you like to see a newsletter circulated, or would a website with news content be something of interest?
I would potentially like to see the association as a representative body come about again, but I think one of the problems the ALAE had was getting people like us to step up and take on some of the roles on what I believe was an unpaid/voluntary basis.
When you say a representative body, are you suggesting workplace representation, or with the CAA?
I think it would have to be on a far more full time and paid position to give us the full resources that Prospect provide whilst specialising in the knowledge of what we do and being able to represent us with the regulatory bodies and employers where agreements are in place, so essentially a stand alone Union again with a good sized membership.
If agreements are in place already, would you like to see them removed and new agreements made? If that is what you mean, then that will be an interesting discussion.
It would have been interesting to see if the old ALAE would have made any difference to the current CAA-EASA licensing equivalency mess post Brexit.
That would have been interesting. However, we are where we are and only a couple of months into the new relationship with the issuer of UK licenses, so a good time to build relationships.