The Many Tentacles -
I agree with your points however... the new vending machines are hired and paid for by Aramark, not NATS... at a cost of £7k per year.
Zkdli
The safety department has blossomed, to the extent that they are now overmanned yet we can't cut back because no one in management has the balls (That is a direct quote from someone who works in safety by the way).
The excuse is that if they cut back, even to sensible numbers (anything more would be stupid), and someone has an incident, then management will get the blame. It's yet another cover your arse exercise.
the argument that many tentacles is making is not necessarly the message but the way it is put across. Why pink elephants and purple camels? Why any freaking coloured aninmal at all? Barron realised very quickly that NATS has a very high level of intelligent workers.
Don't treat us like idiots and we'll maybe not switchoff everytime we hear mutterings of new initiatives.
Arty-Ziff
Nats had until recently a big shortfall in ATCO numbers. The temporary drop in traffic has alleviated this but has not made the problem go away. The number of people we need every year just to sustain the natural wasteage is way beyond what we could get from other sources.
Talkdownman
There are some good GS/LAS out there however is it really a full time job? why not approach suitable people with say 5 years experience and ask them if they wish to be in a GS pool. Then they could be rostered on it one or 2 days a month. No scrabbling round to achieve 16 hours radar time each month and a good working knowledge of sectors maintained.
The fact is that there is so much crap being pushed down from higher levels that GS/LAS types now find that supervising has almost become a secondary duty trailing behind all the paperwork that management generates.