The Virgin Strike (or not-actually-a-strike) Thread III

[scoobydooo]

These last 2 examples would be directly addresses if trip pay and allowances were combined and the resultant financial pot paid in reflection to duty periods, not just flying duty periods.

Most other airlines pay duty pay similar to half hour or an hour after on chocks or if delayed transport or FSM caught up by something else then the off duty time is the actual off duty time and they are paid accordingly. This is hopefully one of the commitments the company will stick with and will sort out, to just modify trip pay would not work, it would have to be trip pay and allowances pay combined otherwise people would still go sick for the low allowance destinations.

As for splitting CSS/FSM's to a different union, or having separate negotiations for them the strength in numbers thing isn't really a valid argument I feel. When you look at the distribution of the crew.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3801642&postcount=116 is where the following numbers come from;

Unite said it has 3200 members, I think Virgin says it has 4500 members, lets say that's 71% membership.

Of those 4500 crew 795 are CSS or FSM's, only 18% of the crew. seniors are 35% and juniors 47%.

Put that in terms of unite members CSS's AND FSM's that's 565 members total (if distributed evenly throughout the ranks at 71% membership).

I think that really points to these 2 ranks requiring separate negotiations either via alternate union or separate talks with virgin as any ballot will never capture their concerns fully.

What say yee ?