I hope the AF pilots will come to the conclusion that it makes no sense to hurt your own company, when the government makes an unreliable move.
What is the position of the AF-management in this matter?
Are they willing to negotiate a better pension scheme that is less dependant on government rules?
You know the proverb " In Rome do as the Romans do ". Here it unfortunatly means that if you don't show " some muscle " it is interpreted as " Let's go they're weak ". I don't know if some of you are french speaking and got to see this pathetic movie ( blockbuster here to my dismay ) called " Dīner de con ". The story of well off yuppies who each month invite to diner a nice bloke whom they make fun of the whole evening. You have to be french, and a wicked one at that to find this " funny ha ha !! " It's crazy, unproductive but is very much rooted in the french soul. Anyone who is upfront nice is taken for a bloody fool and I'm sure many of you have experienced " Parisian arrogance ".
This has, with time, created a general feeling of distrust that makes one party dig its heels in the sand and the other try to screw them.
Only when hooddle of money has been wasted do people sit around a table to talk.
Our very union board got sacked at the last election because of its negociating line. Pilots, specially the younger one who never had to suffer anything, wanted a much stronger stand. Instead they got 6 weeks of a fruitcake chairman who resigned because he couldn't stand the heat, from management and from the union opposition.
Anyway back to topic :
The pension reform line was : incent people to go to 60 instead of cashing in after 25 years. In order to do that, the pension was supposed to be substancially raised. This would of course not happen overnight but I think 2015 was the tharget to get the new system into full swing by which time, if you chose to leave before 60, you pension was dimished by a certain percentage. Of course if you lost your licence before hitting 60 you were entitled to full pension.
Since we have the dubious priviledge to share our fund with the cabin crew and non AF pilots, you can easily imagine the feud it led to.
The governement told us it would implement the reform but said the exact contrary to the cabin crew who were / are threatening to strike early next month. Who should we believe is anyone's guess but that certainly doesn't make us very trusty.
Yes, it is a shame to hurt one's compagny but, the very compagny could weigh a lot more if it decided to with the governement. They are just being very naughty in the matter and had they really put their full energy into this, there would have been no strike.
There is however a big BUT. The new pension reform would imply that AF contribution to the pilots fund go up about 20% and this is precicely what they want to avoid still looking like angels and why they didn't put too much energy in defusing the crisis since, according to promises made to cabin crew by the governement, the reform would not be implemented and AF would't have to cough up. Everyone but the pilots was walking out happy.
They don't really care if pilots push on to 65 but do care about having their contribution increased. So you see, 100 mill Euro in comparison to a higher contribution was worth the bet.
None of this has really been explained by the media ( what do we expect ??? ) or by the pilots who, in a way, were trying not to piss of the cabin crew by making this public.
As you see, this is a snake pit and there is a lot more than meet the eyes.
We should have a pilot's fund and not this communist farce. But this happens to be th law, 1953 to be accurate, by which we have to go. Being the most financially prolific population, the lawmaker isn't about to let us take our assetts and go our separate way.
Hope this is clear enough.