ATCO2
Do you honestly believe that someone doing Luton or Thames is a Band 5 controller?
Do you honestly think that someone doing Luton
and Thames is worthy of more money than say someone from Scottish or Manchester ACC?
The fact is a lot of what goes on in the TC Ops room is unfair on outside units... heck there's a huge disparity in the room - do you honestly think Thames or Luton equates to the same as someone doing North or South plus another sector?
The fact is when the units moved there should have been a differentiation between tasks - How fair is it to Luton only tower guys who wanted to move to WD but couldn't??
Unfortunately we are stuck with the system, even though the likes of Aberdeen or Farnborough are shafted. There is no way you can claim that Thames/Luton is worth more than Aberdeen or Farnborough, yet the difference is tens of thousands.
There should be a banding system, but it should not have such a huge differential. The banding system should also be run so that there is a more realistic set of rules, and not run on the lines of paying everyone in the same huge Ops room the same money because they happen to be in one room.
WRT people who came kicking and screaming to WD from Heathrow, then it is fair enough in some respects that those people were kept on the higher banding, but people coming into the job today certainly should not.
The majority of Thames Radar controllers are either valid, or cross training onto other approach sectors, including Heathrow, so how do you work out what banding they should be on if there is to be a differential at TC?
The way you work it out is find out which App functions really are Band 5 level. Then you have to do one of those to get Band 5 pay.
It's happening in the TMA - the days of controllers doing both East and Capital but no core sector (to most TMA controllers way of thinking, not MUR level) are numbered (with the exception of people who are getting towards retirement), the idea now is that every new TMA controller must have a proper core sector (i.e. satisfy MUR) as well as possibly doing a secondary one (the vast majority do).
Unfortunately we are too far down the road now for the Union to agree to re-visit individual App functions within TC.
But that's all right, we have one watch in TC where the vast majority of Thames controllers are Thames only and are not as yet cross training... as long as they continue to get Band 5 pay, screw everyone else eh?
Anyone who is not honest enough to admit there is a huge disparity both within the room and also between App functions and external units is frankly delusional.
It will be interesting if the Thames function does move to Farnborough... will Farnborough be given a banding change, and will the Thames only valid people be able to validate on a different App function (2 actually to get MUR unless it is EGLL) in the TC Ops room?
One is spectacularly failing to do so at the moment... on what is universally accepted as being the easiest App sector in the room.
Edited to say:
I'm not saying that there is an easy fix for Banding, and certainly not saying that whatever you did, everyone would be happy. But at the moment there are huge flaws in the system.