I hear ya psycho joe.
It was 93' when Impulses' current reign of terror on pilot conditions began.
Everyone was effectively sacked at midnight one day and appointed as shareholders of the pilot providing contracting companies (under duress) the next day.
A few of us were made redundant under very difficult circumstances, with no hope but too naively engage the help of the AFAP if we were to have any chance of re employment and/or seeing our quite substantial unpaid entitlements ever again.
Well that was the beginning of the end for us. The AFAP (T.O’C) lumped us with 1 and 1 only industrial officer who on the face of it seemed quite competent and confident in achieving a favourable outcome for us. Oh, were we wrong there. As soon as we walked into the commission, we were confronted by a QC, a Barrister and a couple of Solicitors. Our rep was tongue tied and bewildered for the rest of the proceedings and Gerry McGowan was rubbing his hands together with glee. Talk about inadequate preparation. The AFAP certainly can’t say they didn’t see this coming as it had been brewing for a few months prior to this event with everyone sh!tting there pants.
Well this went back and forward for a couple of years with the response from Impulse predominantly being “we don’t employ pilots apart from the CP and C&Ts so how can we re employ these guys, and in any case we are not respondents to the award so we don’t recognise any entitlements”.
We must have cost Gerry a large fortune in legal fees but he unfortunately got his way and held a guillotine over every pilots head from that time on. The AFAP on the other hand, got out of it quite cheap as they did sweet F.A. in return.
The AFAP were totally reckless in there handling of this case and information we obtained from an outgoing industrial officer suggested that we were pushing sh!t up hill with a pointy stick anyway as the AFAP still had many members in Impulse and didn’t want to rock the boat too hard. Well f@#k me, what do we pay our subs for if this is the attitude of our union.
You may be surprised to know that I have been “clean” of the AFAP for about 8 years now. If I had my day again, I would have gone straight to Gerry and avoided all the mess and misperceptions. Forget the AFAP, they have too many prejudices.