The Virgin Strike Thread II

[scoobydooo]

Good post vs_lhr, I agree with you 100% - (I didn't pick myself up off the floor, so now you are down here with me as you have just hit it too - people will talk )

So I see a couple of ways of doing this, either you come over to mine and we hammer out a deal or I come to yours....

Just kidding so given that you and I have already discussed things that need addressing moving forward namely;


From employees point of view;

Basic, Trip Pay,Length of service recognition (financial), Crew down, Allowances ,car parks, promotions/fast track (transparent) the list goes on and on

From company point of view;

Sickness, sickness, sickness, increased productivity (what else does the company want ? (that is a genuine question).


So how do we get there, I see a number of ways. Hammering out for example a 3 year deal to try and ascertain these things, this however would take a lot of negotiating and at present time is of the essence, we all want to get something acceptable to both sides imminently to call the strikes off. So... a 3 year deal, good for the company but time scales do not support it, also not great for the crew because there is not much ability to review the progress of it yearly.


How about a 1 year deal (which is nearly up) which for example offers 4.3% basic with no strings, the 0.5% difference is redistributed into trip pay for juniors and seniors. I think the next set of negotiations are set to be in April time, 5 months away, so in the next 5 months the reps along with the unions and management try to create a 2 year deal to as you say bring us inline.

That leaves the standby month that the company wants, well no one wants it, however if we can reduce crew sickness then we can hopefully reduce the requirement for standby cover, so why not agree to introduce the extra month of standby in 5 years for a period of e.g. 18 months only and then as phase II of improvements are implemented it is removed (phase II discussed below) but it would have to be contractual that after 18 months it is gone and could not just be re-agreed through council agreement.

As I mentioned before (sorry record player) we both know that if correct manning levels are attained and crew came to work through less sickies and the incentives were there, there would not be an issue - sounds very basic, but it;s one hell of a formula but we need to address it because right now, there is more sickness each year, so the company wants more standby - if we dont instigate serious changes in 10 years time we wont have rosters everyone will just be on standby 11 months a year !


So how I think a 2 year plan could be achieved;


In order to reduce sickness it must be, not expensive to not come to work, that's the wrong word, how about "lucrative" for crews to come to work so phase I of deal II targets trip pay, and we see what this does for sickness, if on comparing historical data it shows reduced sickness we increase crew down payments, if less crew are going sick the hit is not as hard to the company (we review sickness again after a period of time). In phase II of deal II we look at bringing basics in line a bit more, again reviewing sickness to see what sort of impact this has, if positive we we further enhance crew down payments.

Imagine a league table with number of sickness last year and the company publishes it monthly, target to start with is for example 90% of same time last year, if this is achieved crew down payments are increased by 10% (that's 10% of the new decent amount not piddly £5 etc). At each review stage say quarterly if targets are achieved the crew down payments increase, it is now in the crew best interests to not take the sickie. Rank results too, it would be nice to see the results by rank, if certain ranks are worse than others (I have my guess of what is worse) but perhaps as mentioned below if a.n. rank achieves its target and another doesn't, the low ( sickness by % obviously not including long term) rank achieves an increase.



At the same time we need to look at crew turnover, are we recruiting the correct sort of people, why is it so high, how can we keep experienced crew.

If we can get everything just right then crew will go the extra mile, sickness should reduce, crew feel valued (especially through length of service pay). increased productivity should happen as a by-product of all of the above without the need for expensive crew down payments.

I have other ideas too, like the value of crew down payments are linked to length of time in the company e.g. a unit value x years served, i.e. if you are a 4 year serving senior your crew down payment is higher than a 2 year, or it could be linked to rank (though the fast track scheme or the my mum knows someone or your boyfriend is a cpm thing makes this a bit messy)


Obviously when I say lucrative to be at work we cant discriminate genuine long term sickness (> 7 days with a docs note)


Well, those are just a few ideas rolling around in my head, shall we get up off the floor now .


Loving the new Year, lots of resolutions, broke the no prune one after 4 days !

apologies for the format, I just kind of brain dumped (that's why there's not much)