British KLM pilots to ballot for stike action

[flyburg]

@u0062

Okay there Francis,lighten up!!

@ Bluepilot

I do try to stay informed. Just the other day I had a lenghty conversation with one of our shorter, slightly fullfigured and always redfaced college from the upper part of the island.
He gave me a lot of details the UK pilots face in to their negotiations.

1. bottom of the list with keeping position and salary until over taken by KLM salary. Bottom of the list with position frozen is no problem. However, I did not realise that salary frozen would actually mean a decrease in salary since you wouldn't get nomal yearly raises. That's why I said in an earlier post: salary frozen with the exception of normal UK raises until overtaken by KLM salary this is in my opinion not an unreasonable request. I can not imagine VNV having a problem with that because it would not hurt KLM pilots as long as KLM pilots get pass over pay

2.Pension, Pfff,that's a tough one. You now enjoy a end salary scheme, while all the other pilots have a mid wage scheme. However this should be negotiable.You may not know but, Transavia pilots had until their last CLA negotiations an end wage scheme. However, as this is according to new dutch law almost not feasable anymore, they were able to negotiate a deal where they went to a average wage pension deal in such a way that (granted) almost nobody was of worse.
As it is impossible to just change to the KLM pension ( really this is not possible as every pilot saves individually for his pension, albeit in a collective fund) BALPA should take a hard look at how KLM dealt with the transavia pilots and try to get a similar setup.

3. Basing. That, I'm sorry. that's a bullet you'll have to bite. This is the airline industry, things change.

Anyways, I'm gonna leave the discussion now. When I first posted I wanted to express a genuine hope that you guys would get a fair deal, but I also wanted to voice my displeasure at the constant bashing of the VNV=KLM pilots. It's mainly between KLM and BALPA. When VNV get's involved it's because they are doing what they are paid to do.

Good luck

greetings