How many of us remember the good old days of yore when we had stores which were filled with a reasonable supply of spare parts? Now we have supply chain managers presiding over a series of broken links ending in “nil stock”
Accountants don’t care about that. They don’t count the number of days we lose revenue because of 'nil stock', or have to try and maintain and fly machines carrying numerous MEL defects to keep contracts going because of 'nil stock'. All they do is proudly point to the fact that we have saved $10 per unit by having a particular part held in some central store in another country and only available at 5 days notice and probably a cost of $200 in air freight bills.
Bean counters are only interested in beans as numbers, whether as coffee beans (at N150 per cup) or human beans sadly needed to maintain and fly machine beans. We’re just a commodity to be acquired, ground up or disposed of like any other form of bean. If some of the beans in a can leave then it’s up to operations to acquire more stock, not up to the bean counters to ensure sufficient capital is made available so that beans are not lost.
In happier days when people like Steve Meddling was a tea boy (like ‘etienne) and Randy Organ was a senior store man, Bristow used to have personnel managers who knew who you were and who you could always call in on at the office and have a chat. People like George Pudding or Roy Birmingham who would offer you a cup of tea and a uniform shirt before you left
Now we literally have inhumane resource damagers who have no interest in looking after our interests, only in building their own empires and wearing more flashy gold jewellery and constantly singing the meaningless mantras such as One World, One Mission, One Team. Alan Bristow should sue Air Log for turning a company people used to be proud of working for into another GOM empire with a big staff turnover
In Europe it’s different – there are unions and labour laws enforced by government. Overseas, most employees work to meaningless and practically unenforceable contracts which are changed by managers on a whim with no consultation. Because we are multi-national with many different work ethics and expectations of our employers this is taken advantage of and we are mostly a disorganised rabble (and I suspect will remain so
).
Aviation unions are not what they were. Most of them now are responsible organisations which have productive discussions with employers about a way forward which is mutually beneficial in that they have a happy, productive, well paid work force with low staff turn over contributing to a profitable company with contented employees. Maybe this is why pilots and engineers in Europe are so much better paid than almost all in Africa even where they are working for the same employer having contracts with the same oil companies and yet in an area where the extraction of mineral resources is considerably more expensive and difficult. The national staff unions in Nigeria are trying to fight the worst excesses of Mike Armlick, but don’t seem to have the will or the muscle power to take him on effectively. Maybe it’s time the expatriates started talking to them, working on a mutually beneficial approach in which they all presented a united front to ensure a fair deal for all employees and that managers have to consult more with staff as people, not beans.