Originally Posted by
Beer Baron
I’m sorry wales but I feel that what you describe still comes under the heading of “trashing the operation for no benefit”.
You may well have created a competitor for your employer (trashing the business) but that has not improved your EA one bit.
Is this new start-up going to take 240 ex-NAA pilots? If 20 pilots go to the new mob and leave the other 220 on a crap EA is that a well negotiated outcome?
After all, there have long been other better paid jobs out there for pilots who wanted to quit, creating one more option is not going to solve the problems at NAA unfortunately, it’s just another chance to leave.
We’ll probably have to settle on disagreeing here. I believe that if we had taken their offer, along with their very finest side letter/wages policy work around (which, incidentally, is not something they offered during negotiations), we’d be haemorrhaging staff out of every orifice even more so than we currently are because it would have been so far south of market rates. PIA might have been blunt but it shone a light on their toxic IR tactics which, IMO, are what are truly trashing the business- ask Chris Ellison. They clearly came to negotiations working to a higher objective (making an example of us, presumably) and no amount of savvy or nous from our very capable negotiators would have made them budge. At least now we have a viable alternative in the same base city for a sizeable number of employees which, one way or another, puts upward pressure on conditions. We also have a shot at a market rate contract being arbitrated.
Short haul may not have the exact set of negotiating conditions that we’ve had but there are plenty of advantages to be pressed here and this is the best shot you’ll ever get to stop being turkey slapped by IR every four years.