SQ pilots will be most interested to note that the ALPAS Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) vote of 2 May 2001 produced an 83% majority in favour of returning to the Company an acceptance of terms equal and not worse than the Collective Agreement (CA) offer of 15 December 2000, made by SQ to ALPAS.
Perhaps both parties plus the Industrial Arbitration Court (IAC) will be pleased by this outcome, given that SQ goes along with it - the Members, as they will now receive their substantial backpayent, the Company, as it will be able to advertise its new improved pay scales to attract desperately needed pilots plus operate the 777 beyond the present 4200 NM agreement and the IAC (for which, read the regime) as dirty washing will not now (hopefully) require to be publicly laundered.
Members may, however, wish to reflect that a course of action taken along the lines advocated at the very start of this thread would certainly have produced a fair measure of goodwill from SQ/IAC with acceptance of the numbers, which, after months of subsequent effort look not to have been bettered and, more importantly, this goodwill would have allowed all the energy and emotion of the subsequent negotiations and maneuvers to have been, perhaps, successfully directed towards achieving the much more important CA signature date of 21 November 1998, sequencing expiry of the former CA on 20 November 1998. As previously mentioned, this outcome would have had the merit of ensuring a 3 year term (rather than now potentially a 5+ year term) for the new CA, with negotiation starting shortly in anticipation of an expiry date of 20 November 2001. This would have allowed SQ to gracefully further increase pay rates in November 2001, following realisation that even the “new improved” rates were not assuaging the now publicly admitted desperate shortage of pilots.
In anticipation, therefore, does ALPAS have a strategy to counter the next possible move by SQ to boost pilot recruitment - either the payment of a joining bonus or pilot entry at a higher salary increment than first year level, both of which would be detrimental to the past efforts and loyalty of presently serving pilots.
Views on this last matter are keenly sought from ALPAS members.