For those that still haven't cottoned on to what this is about, I will state again this is NOT about trying to get a payrise.
This is about continual attacks on our terms and conditions, as well as potential Health and Safety issues.
For the longhaul operators among us, imagine doing a 10 hour duty to JFK, Miami, Chicago, etc and being issued with only two 500ml bottles of crew water and a couple of sandwiches... with the company stating their intention is to get rid of it entirely. Of course you can't just pull over mid-flight to pick up some refreshments, just like we don't have time to nip into the terminal on a 25 minute turnaround.
The pilots accepted new part-time contracts for new captains to help the company's seasonality issues. This was done through negotation with the company. Of course some crew were not willing to accept this as they felt it would be the start of the atack on our T+Cs. We voted and as a majority it was accepted so as to avoid the use of contract captains over the peak summer months. This would at the very least offer some career progression to our hard-working and very able SFOs who are sitting patiently in the command holdpool. Now the company have basically said 'Stuff you! We'll take in contract captains anyway.'
As usual, it is the workforce who bear the brunt of some ridiculous managerial decisions. They state that by removing crew tea and coffee (which is already paid for from our own salary.. therefore they have no right to take it away) they will achieve an annual saving of £400,000. At the same time, they award themselves pay increases amounting to double that figure!
Last year they sent out an email highlighting that the market looked tough for the following year and that they were voluntarily having a management pay freeze. It was soon discovered that they had awarded themselves massive share bonuses of several hundred thousand pounds only a couple of weeks earlier.
No-one has yet accepted responsibility for the recent decision to hedge fuel at $1204 per tonne, when the current market cost is about one third of that price.
As a pilot workforce, we are a generally easy and realistic bunch of people. We gladly will share the pain in tough times, but as you can see, the only sharing here is among the crew, while the AMB are filling their pockets at our expense.
A first step work to rule is not too far away.