Hopefully some action will now be taken to stand up to the dictatorial approach the company has taken in the last few years. Unfortunately most of the members of the company council are on the maximum salary(B-scale),flying the widebodies and not far off from retirement age of 55 so a lot of the pay talks and pensions don't concern them, which surely affects their negotiating position.(I'm sure there'll be a response to that along the lines of, why don't you run for council etc but the idea of having elected members is to put forward the ideas and concerns raised.) This is how the younger membership feels.
The company introduced a 4.75% or so pay increase in the last round of talks, however, to maintain the benefits of the pension, we have to increase our contributions to fund it.I think the MD's using Gordon Brown's Stealth Tax model for that, being an accountant!!
I can apprectiate why the MD has been cutting costs and he is seeing how far he can push the work-force but this has to STOP, a line has now got to be drawn. I think the recent vote by the membership(over 90%) has shown that it has the backing of the majority for this action.
So as you can see, it's not all rosy at spotty M!!