In these apparant dire times, my council tax has not gone down. Maybe I should copy and paste the bosses email and say that I would like a reduction in my council tax rate as I dont like paying such a high amount for their service (as it seems if airlines dont want to pay what we charge they dont have to)..... No? I didnt think so, but I pay it anyway as I have to and funnily enough they are most likely going to up it come April this year and with no payrise, I am going to be even worse off.
(Mis) trusting NATS, they most likely got wind of something from the airlines and have done the usual spin on it to make us feel guilty and pressured into keeping the airlines and all those thousands of employees going.... what crap! We dont work for an airline and how they run it is down to them and, not my concern. Dont try and make us feel guilty for any rough rides they are getting from the economy at the moment.
NATS likes us all to band together, eg: pensions, saving all these airlines that are going to the wall (even though the majority of the ones that have gone were buggered anyway and it was only a matter of time) and now the pay deal, all when it suits them.
I bet my new crappy pension that when times are steaming ahead in a few years and we are all on the way up and the rewards promised by NATS for 'helping' them out now would come to fruition ala a bigger payrise.... we will get squat. Eerily this rings truth from only a few months ago when we were all promised what a great payrise we would get if we voted the pension deal through.
Are memories really that short?
I also fully expect any redundencies made by NATS to be blamed on us ATCO's for any pay we recieve. It's NATS' great chance to get rid of a load of staff such as our valuable ATSA's and use the economic situation to put their spin on it so it doesnt look like their fault... oh how clever mister Barron!!
Strangely enough, this is all too convenient for the date for EFDS rearing its ugly head and then management dont have to say 'ooops, we got it wrong. More of you will be forced out now, sorry'.
They have probably calculated they can get rid of more staff and again, blame us greedy ATCO's, and make everyone feel guilty, so we go for no payrise please.. all smiles for a few months then guess what..... redundencies anyway!
BA did it recently, a chance to offload over a 1000 middle managers ( a NATS speciality in having lots of those too) using the econmic slump as the reason.... this is a great way of cutting back on staff with no comeback from said staff.
We are still pulling in a healthy profit. They just dont like that its not enough to finance their new business model.... NATS Island...only available to senior management and families, paid for by us workers and staffed by failed trainees.
If we are still raking in the millions, i will fail to be sympathetic to their apparant poverty, bread line claims
