What rest? Free housing? Two way Audi pick up? Good accomodation for free? Zero income tax? School fees allowances? Rotating bid system? Outstanding hotels? Incredible destinations where you can find and buy things cheaper than in Dubai? Out of the chart maintenance and onboard technology? 42 days annual leave? Emirates club card and benefits? Reserved tickets for family for annual leave trips? Safe and modern city to live? Health system? WHAT REST YOU MEAN, MORON? Where in the world you find this? These things are still there.
These thing are still there but as ever, the devil is in the details. The housing situation of late is worthy of a thread in itself. It isn't free- if you move out you used to get a utilities allowance of (for an F/O) about 150,000Dhs a year- that is what your accommodation is really costing you. Which is a lot to pay for a two bedroom apartment in Al Barsha. Now, you don't have the option of moving out so you are stuck with the accommodation you are given until you upgrade.
The Audi pick up and drop off is great- but it also gets you to work about 45 minutes before your day legally starts. That is 45 minutes of your time the company is getting for nothing, and it makes a mockery of the FTL rules.
There is no income tax, but there are plenty of hidden, and not so hidden, taxes in Dubai.
The school fee allowance only covers a maximum of 90% of your school fees, not including any out of school activities. The allowance didn't go up this year, but the school fees did. By about 12%.
The rotating bid system would work well if it was left alone but ask anybody about manual insertions before and after leave or in the middle of blocks of days off. It has happened to me too often to be coincidence.
Hotels- most are good, some are terrible. Not many are outstanding. Yes, you can buy thing on layovers cheaper than in Dubai, which just goes to show how expensive Dubai is now, tax free or not.
Engineering are now as over worked as any other department, although they do an amazing job with what they have available.
42 days annual leave, but only if you can take it. A limited maximum number of days off in any one block, so you can't take it all at once, but still only one annual leave ticket a year. And the company has recently taken to deciding that "America" is one destination so if you don't live near an online destination you pay for your own domestic flights.
The health care from the clinic remains, mercifully, good but remember you pay for the health insurance of your dependants by salary deduction and there is no way out of this, even if your wife has health cover through her own job.
The EPC has nothing to do with the company so I won't even go there.
Not one of the things Cosmo has mentioned has improved in the last five years. There is a definite trend emerging.