'Cut the Dross'
3 miles
I think you might get some flak for what you have written, though hopefully people will read it in the spirit it was meant.
As a slight olive branch whilst talking about cutting the dross, we as operational staff could help out by stopping the practice of promoting inept people out of the Ops room into made-up jobs.
We all know about (ex)ATCOs who have had unit moves - at own request - (paid by NATS) then have failed to validate. If that happens, move them back to the unit they were valid at and make them re-validate there (and make them repay the company the moving costs). If they fail to validate, don't stick them in some made up, mickey mouse job on full ATCO pay.
I'm all for looking after ATCOs who are getting on in years (the brain does slow down and traffic levels/complexity are still on the up) who feel the need to come out of the OPs room etc - these people who have worked hard for most of their career should be supported and their experience used in the run up to retirement.
We should not be holding onto people whatever the cost if they are proven to be inept/dangerous or whatever purely due to lack of ability i.e. in the prime of their working age.
Get rid of people who are unable to achieve MUR - why should someone get band 5 pay as an ATCO if they cannot fulfill MUR through lack of ability? It happens. Fair enough if they are put on 2 non core sectors because of watch requirements, however proper planning would mean that every ATCO could do a core sector instead of the ususal firefighting and letting people away with doing 2 non core sectors and pretending this counts as MUR.
I totally agree with you that there is probably a lot of fat that could be easily gotten rid of at CTC, however we can't overlook our excess fat at the coal face either.
However it seems ironic with all the engineering heavy projects that are in the pipeline, that we seem to be culling huge numbers of engineers... the very people we need at the moment. This cull is going to see engineering extremely stretched, yet in the meantime elsewhere we overlook obvious areas for savings.
I have walked round CTC many times and often wondered why so many people are needed to type things into computers, as that's what seems to be happening a lot of the time. I've been involved in projects (quite heavily in some) and appreciate there are a lot of valuable people at CTC.
However when I see so many people sitting at computers, I often wonder if in fact a lot of what happens at CTC actually self generates extra work for no reason.
I often see the mini briefing rooms in use and wonder if people are having meetings to discuss what they have typed that morning or what the picture of the day on NATSNET is. Cynical and not healthy, but I reckon anyone walking into CTC must think similar..