bRISTOW pAY NEGOTIATIONS
Bristow signed an agreement with BALPA to negotiate solely with BALPA on issues of aircrew pay and allowances.
This summer, after an INITIAL negotiation, the BALPA Company Council for Bristow recommended that members reject the Company's first offer. There is a formal, properly frameworked and regulated way of proceeding. The Company seems to have chosen to ignore this.
It appears that the Company is appealing directly to employees to accept their first offer. The procedures of publicizing the positions of the Company and the Union seem to have been ignored by the Company.
As a Bristow pilot in Den Helder, Holland, I am left in limbo. That a 'responsible' employer should apparently ignore the formal, agreed negotiating procedures when it doesn't suit the management beggars belief as a mode of industrial behaviour. Confusion and misrepresentation ensue. Are we adults or children?
If Bristow aircrew allow the Company to sideline BALPA at the Company's whim, then we employees deserve all the abuse we will get for the foreseeable future. We will have abandoned the one body which has the clout to stick up for us.
Clive Roberts
AS332L pilot
Bristow Den Helder