An insight into ASA
If people want to see what it is like at that organisation, here are a few examples;
It was raised in a senate estimates committee (someone help me out with the exact details) that the CEO of ASA, with approx 3000 employees and a relatively small budget, is on a salary 50% greater than the head of Community Services (60,000 employees and massive budget). In fact, the 3 next executives down the rung at ASA earned more.
The CEO, in his column in the ASA magazine, in Jan 2001, said " I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas holidays and have returned to work ready to face the challenges of the year ahead". The people at the coal face, the controllers, work 24/7, 365 days a year. How insensitive! Many controllers were at the time unable to take their annual leave due to staff shortage, and some had had applications for long service leave in for 3 years without any hope of it being granted "in the forseeable future". Out of touch? You better believe it. All this a couple of years after an avalanche of voluntary redundencies.
Ther are about 1100 operational controllers, yet ASA boasts a staff of over 3000. How much dead wood does the organisation carry?
When the organisation can't fulfil it's controllers' annual leave requirement, it buys the leave back? (Cheaper than hiring the correct amount of staff?) Guys (like me), who can't see any hope of being granted leave anywhere near when they would like it, if at all, take the money. Another year without a holiday. At least I can read about how much the CEO enjoyed his!
The organisation spends something in the order of $10 MILLION a year on legals (not to mention the managers, secretaries etc time), fighting it's staff in various courts, trying to find loopholes in agreements, EBA's etc, to save a few pennies (and loses almost without fail). It then pays a professional liar to 'spin' the facts to the public, denigrating the very profession the organisation is about. How much does Mr Dudley earn?
ASA has spent in the order of $500 MILLION on TAAATS. If it really was a commercial animal, It could have had the same result for about $50 mil (Ask ASA about Hughes- oh, another court case lost, sorry 'settled'). Is even a murmur heard about waste and ineptitude on this scale? The technology was out of date and second rate by the time it was installed.
I could go on, and I'm sure others will. You just stick to your guns, ASA managers. Crush those insolent controllers! Your track record speaks for itself. You must be right.