had my briefing yesterday and i'm f#*@ing raging!!
. Various points were made and facts and figures were thrown around in an attempt to blind us with statistics i think. The things i took from our meeting were :
1: NSL is more than likely in the future going to be put up for sale, The pregnant pause by philip at this question said volumes and his suggestion that the rebranding was just to make NSL seem more dynamic and forward thinking seemed like a load of smelly stuff to me.
2. management say they are very embarrased by the webpage on nats net that was being used to extol the virtues of nats and its experience of FULLY privatising, and its knowledge of transferring public sector pensions to private sector. They blamed an over enthusiatic manager for over reaching.
3. The pension surplus was run down to just 100% of liabilities by increases in pay, us living longer (apparently this came as a great surprise to the actuaries, that we are living longer , so they hadn't factored that in) the company using the pension holiday as apparently this is best practice in the pensions game.They say it was done with the full knowledge and agreement of the trustees as best practice dictates. My question to the trustees is yes it may be best practice to run the surplus down so that it funds only 100% of the liabilities, but is this prudent??? it doesnt allow for any negative turn in the investments or unforseen circumstances, so you end up in the situation we are in now where the company comes to the workforce saying we need to make some changes so that we can plan our finances for the next 15 years. Also on the subject of the investments, i was surprised to learn that a significant portion of our pensions scheme was invested in the relavely volatile stock markets i forget the exact figure but it was around 40% ( please correct this if i'm wrong) and only 60% in safe bonds and gilts. Now the CAA run portion of the CAAPS is not in the same mire as us apparently. A much larger proportion of their scheme is in the safer bonds and gilts (around 80%).They were also offered a payment holiday , but they DECLINED?? if best practice dictates that one should take advantage of this then why decline?? could they maybe , perhaps be looking after their pension scheme in a way that NATS were not?
4. if you vote no then , for the union to be able to go back and renegotiate, they need to know what specifically you are voting no for, and what would get you back. they cant go back to the table and say this whole thing is a tub of sh1t, they need a negotiating topic. For me at the moment there is no single topic that i'm not very happy about, i'm just generally pissed off, so will need to think about that.
5. the union believe that this is THE best deal that we are going to get. They may be able to get SOME changes if we walk but it will essentially be the same deal.The briefing was delivered in a matter of fact way, but was definitely aimed at the worst case scenario. There are a lot of unknowns out there. will the government step in and re nationalise. For NERL, probably. For NSL?? not as certain(their words not mine). so do we walk out in sympathy for our colleagues. If nationalised, where does the pension stand. unknown
do we go back in to the CAA part of the pension scheme. unknown
will we be like the french, striking every 6 months to keep every benfit we can? unknown
The overall impact for me from this briefing was very sobering. The PCS guy there seemed to me to be the most genuine person in the room and he was really not happy that he was having to recommend this to his members. He said that he would like nothing more than to tell the barron to go stick his DB9 where the headlights dont shine, but that was not going to change the fact that we have a stark choice to make. The pension scheme is in trouble in the union's and NATS opinion. The government at the moment are not going to bail it out, whether that would change if we walked i don't know. NATS say that they will not be able to afford the increases in the pension scheme for very long and that they would have to consider bankruptcy. AT THAT POINT we are in a totally different ball game. There's no guarantee that the government is going to come riding in on a white horse saying' that's alright boys and girls we've come to take you away from the nasty private sector, here, have everything you want!' so we may have to fight battle after battle to get what we need.
Part of me is really ready to do that. i've had enough like everybody else here of barron feathering his company nest whilst telling us we need to make savings. I've had enough of people chipping away and chipping away at our benefits whilst putting on lavish awards ceremonies at big hotels, and wasting millions on acquiring systems that suddenly fall on a back burner because they are not suitable. I'm tired of seeing new company buzzword and policies being launched with great fanfare and great expense ( i.e destinations, etc) when we are struggling to get equipment that would make our jobs slightly less hard to. I sit with no cross coupled frequncies without a mosaic radar without mode S and still i do my job! i dont ask for any great ceremony from the company to pat me on the back for doing my job, but i would like the penny pinching to stop. Air traffic is a safety related job . Money should not be a factor in the equipment provided to the people doing it. i know this is but a fantasy especially since part-privatisation. Now if a radar goes down at night or at a weekend, the first question asked is do you need it, can it wait til monday. THAT SUCKS.I have had enough of being asked to do things that mean i have to do work on my 30 min break, i'm not doing that anymore, you can f***ing well get on with it! When i first joined NATS i was so happy and proud to be in a well thought of , highly rated job that was well compensated and the staff were, minus the odd person, you know who you all are, generally happy to work for the company. I hate that through all this you have turned me into a cynical person who would no more do something to help out the company than chew his own foot off. I hate that i no longer give a toss what is happening in the future of air traffic, and that all i want to do now is come in , talk to planes, not lose seperation, and go home. That is the sum total of my job satisfaction, and i do really enjoy the actual job, despite my inferences to the contrary. Its challenging, its difficult, some of the people are bloody hilarious and i would miss it if i had to give it up tomorrow.But as far as destinations, awards ceremonies, bar stool session. I cannot be arsed anymore. Thanks NATS, really appreciate it.
As i say this part of me really is geared to fight this. I fear that if the pensions battle is not fought then what use powder. we may as well flood the magazine where all this powder has been stored since '81 and bend over and prepare to be shafted for ever more.
However there is a slighty less militant portion of me that thinks that if the company is in as much sh1t as they say that the worse case scenario is hundreds of job losses, not necessarily to us atco's, but to the atsa's engineers and support staff.Ok i agree some of those nameless faceless people at CTC and other places that seem to get us so riled up we may think we might not miss ( that is not meant as a jibe by the way, i know you probably do fabulous jobs down there, but we atco's are very blinkered in our approach),but its all well and good saying i'm alright jack, but it is a great burden to bear knowing you could be putting some friends jobs in jeopardy.
At the moment i am so angry with both the union for negotiating this and not telling us a damn thing about what they are doing until now. I dont expect them to tell me graphic details, but a quick brief to say that the company is trying to negotiate on a pension related topic may have helped lessen the impact of this. Just saying that yes, you are sorry you had no mandate to go and negotiate on the pensions topic but ' we were looking out for your best interests, really' isnt good enough. Also i'm angry at them for coming out with such a wishy washy excuse when asked about branch policy , stating that we should withdraw from the AAVA agreement if certain things were done. Then when those things were done, just seemingly ignoring it. The prospect atco's rep answer of ' oh well, we have a lot of cotradictory branch policy' is not bloody well good enough. If there is contradictory policy , surely someone should be saying ' hang on, we have contradictory answers to this issue, we better see what the membership would prefer' its not f***ing rocket science.
In my view, Doing an AAVA now is madness in the extreme. Hey if you want to , by all means. work away, earn your extra NON-PENSIONABLE money, Buy your big telly. Sell your annual leave, but please dont be surprised when the company comes later to buy that leave permanently from you. anyway thats a different argument and just my opinion
I am also angry at NATS and the government. They in my view have been deliberately eating in to the surplus and have created a financial mess so big between them that they are now looking at us to bail them out. AGAIN! and the government are just sitting quietly, as a silent partner waiting for barron to do all their dirty work, so that we can be properly prepared for re sale.
so like i said, i wont be making any harsh decisions right now, but i will leave you witha rather scary point from our meeting. The prospect representative did say that if we said no and wanted to walk that he would find it very difficult to go back to prospect and say that they had negotiated a 'class leading' his words, not mine , a class leading deal , but the membership wanted to strike. He said that PROSPECT MAY NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORT the strike. If that happens, my understanding is that any strike would be illegal!
Now thats my two pennys worth, i shall step away from the soapbox. All i would say is do go to any pensions brief you can, this issue is way too important to be misinformed on. Ask your questions, be angry , get the answers you need and make your decision after a lot of thought.
now where did i put that application to maastricht.....