Hi guys,
It's true it's supposed to be easier for you guys to come over and work for Aena from now on since our beloved goverment passed a decree that even allow ATCOs that do not speak spanish to be hired.
It is part of the strategy to scare the crap out of us and make us think they are going to replace us all.
IMO, there is 2 things they may have not thought through:
1- European ATCOs are not more stupid than we are
, so I believe they will unionize as soon as they arrive, like 96% of us are. So they'll have a similar problem but with people not just from Spain.
2- In a country with 4 million unemployed (unofficially almost 5 million since the government doesn't count people attending one of the courses they offer), how is people gonna take if they hire 2000 foreigners?
BTW, sorry for any inconveniences caused but it's not our responsibility. I'll just say we are NOT on strike. Aena did the roster for Christmas here in the Canaries when a 15% traffic reduction was forecasted. The actual reduction was 2%. Also, the roster was designed on a per-day-of-the week basis, meaning they allocated the same number of ATCOs for December 8th and December 22nd.
They included in the roster colleagues in maternity/paternity leave and long term sick leaves, for example. When last minute they tried to cover with overtime, most of us refused because we warned the company in October of these circumstances, had already plans with our families and where quite angry with the media campaigning against us (like publishing our salaries almost everyday and lying blatantly about them). In my particular case, they called me in December 30th at 1pm to fill in for January 1st in the morning. I wasn't even on the island when they called. As you can imagine, I said No thanks!
Underneath all this campaign against us is the intention of the government of selling Aena to private companies to pay part of its 11000 million euros debt due to the recent years' craze of building a new airport in every province in Spain (there's 50 provinces and 47 airports), some as profitable as La Rioja or Huesca, with less than 10 arrivals PER WEEK!
And for some of you thinking we make too much money, our offer to the company implied a 20% reduction in our salaries, but they refused it.
I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have about all this mess.
Cheers!