Totally agreed! Mick in his bit to the Press stated (and its on the website) that we will still make a profit this year. The memo that has been sent around refers to the 4 year agreement (for the bases that signed upto it), not to our basic Contracts of employment. Any pay cut would come in the form of cutting allowances. If the company was on its knees then this would be a logical step to take, however for a company that is cash rich and remains on course to make a Profit during some of the worst trading times the industry has seen this is totally unacceptable and not justified. A pay freeze, yeah maybe I might go along with that if it was proved beyond doubt that it would enable the company to remain profitable and safeguard jobs, but this just sucks if it proves to be the case. Why the guy is so hell bent on p"*sing off the very people that keep the aeroplanes in the air and enable him to turn a profit is beyond me. We, not just the Pilots, but every member of staff who works their butts off to make this company turn a profit overall, should be congratulated and encouraged to keep up the hard work - not punished. I actually like FR as a place to work, good crews, good banter, fantastic aeroplanes and some really interesting flying that keeps the skills sharp and at the moment reasonable pay, but when we get things like this through it just feels like we're all being used so the top brass can line their pockets and as soon as they have enough we'll all be taken outside and shot!
I just hope as a group we can make enough noise at these meetings to push the point through that this is grossly unjustified and wont be tolerated.
Rant over.