Why I'll say no
Here's how I see it.
The joint NATS NTUS pension briefings contain lots of slides showing hundreds of millions of deficit over the last few months. This is scaremongering and misleading since it's comparing short term issues against long term liabilities. I'm sad that the unions agreed to this presentation.
But.... these short term issues could trigger NATS bankruptcy. If there is a deficit at the next trieenial valuation (Dec 09) then the Trustess must get (legally no choice) NATS to make up the shortfall over 5 - 10 years. (They should probably do this after the Dec 08 annual valuation as well, but this is legally less clear cut.) In that case, it's a liablility on NATS that's become real. And if it results in a cost of £150m+ p.a. for 5 years (very possible), this would essentially mean that NATS is insolvent. At the point this happens, Barron and the Airline Group Directors etc. would be forced to put NATS into administration - they can't trade out to see if gets better since trading while knowing your company is insolvent is a crime. (But maybe I can drive his Aston while he's in jail. I’ll just savour that thought...)
At this stage, we get into the nationalisation debate. GB WILL nationalise us if NATS goes down, even if this is by the back door of buying more shares. He has no choice since no private buyer will touch us (with yours) if we have our current pension scheme. And GB can't afford any more pressure on the economy from stopping flights - after all he's already got to pay back four hundred billion quid! (The only worry is that 3 nats directors are GB’s reps, so GB must have cleared nats to take us on. This sounds like madness to me!)
The union b*****ds who've sold us out are saying new public sector schemes aren't edfined benefit and public pay rises are 2%, like for the cops as reasons why we should give in. THIS IS TOTAL B**L**KS!!!! The army can replace the firemen and the police and there's not enough penetration by the unions in the NHS to put it on its knees. But we are unique - our rarity and skills mean we're we have power few others have. If they want planes to fly, they need us and will have to pay us. They'll probably get the media to vilify us and wip up public opinion against us, but that's all they've got and I'm up for the fight. IT'S GOT TO BE NO!!!