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Did NATS shed staff post-01? Or during previous downturns?
Yes it did. The composite solution under which NATS was rescued from administration required £170 million of savings made up of the pension holiday, postponed ATCO recruitment and support cost savings. A lot of people's jobs were hidden in that phrase support cost savings. They were all voluntary redundancies and most were jumping to avoid having to resign when we moved out of London but they were still real people who lost real jobs even if some people prefer to refer to them as dross.
Its never good to see people made redundant, but if it was necessary and do able then, then perhaps its time to look at that again. "The dross" as its now termed seem to be on the increase again, its a bit of an insult to those real people back then who had probably worked for the company a lot longer than some newly created jobs we seem to have now, to have lost their jobs only to now see the CTC car park bursting at the seams. before i pick up flak, I know there are many, skilled, professional, and needed individuals at CTC, i've worked with many of them, but ask any member of staff, including many managers who have dealings with CTC and visited there, they all come back saying the same, shocked at the number of people sitting around drinking coffee there. It is widley know about the issues people have had with the amount of emails, projects etc that come out that people can not see why other than was to give somebody something to do.I just think the company needs to see that the image that is created by CTC rightly or wrongly is effecting morale, and not helping people see why they should be expected to take the sacrifice to help the increasing pension costs, when one of the reasons any pensions scheme becomes costly is the more members that have to be paid for in it.
depends upon how optimistic you are about future payrises
over the period of my career Im farely optimistic, ATCO's are not something you can advertise for in the local paper and start on monday we are a profession not a job. Recruitment issues, competing ASP's both in the UK in non-state units needing to pay more to stay alive and those abroad that are still state funded but may start to look to UK markets especially as rumour a fairly large provider might be looking to sell...mean simple supply and demand, the increasing complexity of the job, will all be factors on pushing pay rises higher, not maybe at this present time, but certainly in the next 15 years and certainly in my career.
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It's got nothing to do with opposing or supporting the management's proposals. I was referring to an ignorance of risk management even though so much of what we do in NATS is based upon it. Those familiar with risk management will recognise that sometimes the bad thing is so bad that you have to do something about it even if it isn't very likely. This may be one of those times.
and in risk management you look at all the risks, and the effects that mitigation of that risk may have, sometimes that mitigation alone creates a hazard elsewhere, and this is why people have taken such an interest in this, other than just because they are pissed at the broken trust. Risk one do nothing, company folds, pension out of window. However mitigation for that is do as asked by Mr baron and new risks created, such as danger to pension and conditions later on because they've now broke what we had, risk to me is that the reason I want a pension is so I can afford to retire, (maybe even earlyer before I become employed as "dross" or die and leave it all to the dogs home) and be in a position that I dont have a mortgage still due to relocations to the most expensive part of the country and the economic markets with house prices, no money to support my kids who got £50k student debts by then etc.... Unlike riskmanagement in NATS, peoples own risk management contains a lot more issues, and whether they are a company man or not, they work to survive, and when they do retire, they not going to give a crap about NATS they think of themselves only.
A crystal ball would be very handy to solve all these issues, those with just a few years left already can see what status they are in, and happy to take the managements mitigation in order to get what they got now, those who have more than the 15 years are in a harder place to make this decision lightly and have bigger concerns than NATS making lots of money.