I think FBC is referring to the next round of assimilation i.e. Fairies & Leckies as Avionics Trade and Riggers and Sootie as the Heavy Trade (sorry forget correct title).
Plumbers remain a law unto themselves.
This will be my second assimilation so having trained in 1 trade, I will (like many others) now be required to work in 4. Guess it works though as I've not heard of many complaints/ horror stories.
Using the less people+same work+less promotion formula is a good way to encourage people to go with out paying them any redundancies. Or is that just a pleasant side effect?