First of all let me say that management are running a VERY cute campaign at LACC by letting it be known that the rest of the country is in favour of this c**p offer. However reading this leads me to think tht this is not the case!
I too thank the negotiators for what must have been a very difficult task, BUT, The offer on the table gives up just too many conditions for it to be acceptable. In fact I understand that the BEC recommended this without a full BEC meeting to thrash the arguments out. WHY?????
For this to be a true 2 year deal(something I am strongly against) shouldn't all the pay rises be back-dated to Jan2001?. NATS are already holding on to the money but if it were to be back-dated then that would at least make it more palatable.
On the issue of TOIL. A rate was set at LACC last year for the buy back of TOIL and now the BEC are prepared to recommend a rate that is around 30% of what was offered last year-WHY??
The rate to be paid for Annual Leave is double that of TOIL. Does this mean that time spent on a day off at a meeting/on OCT.etc is less valuable than a days' AL??
Management are fully aware of the size of this problem and we should not be doing anything to help them out of the mess-certainly nothing under last years' agreed rate anyway. What is the point of working hard to set a precedent one year and throwing it all away 6 months later??
Not sure of the impact of reducing the shift length for part-timers-but I suspect it could lead to additional attendances if it is not carefully written.
The conversion of a TRUCE day into an operational duty is nothing short of a DISGRACE!!!!!!
The rehire of retired ATCOs. Well how is this for reducing the ability to be promoted. i can't wait to see the first ones brought back to sit in the LAS/GS positions drawing salary and pensions. This really is the start of the slipppery slope to getting rid of ATCO jobs. We already have a number of LASs who are no longer planner valid and this opens the door to exacerbate this problem.
So we will now have a policy which has the Flexible Retirement Scheme. This took YEARS to negotiate and bring to fruition for all ATCOs in NATS. The BEC also now want an incentive scheme to deter people from retiring early. What are those incentives and how do the two policies marry together???
We were led to believe that the sectional claim would be addressing things like OJTI payments not giving away many of the hard won policies.
I urge you all to ask whether this offer,with all the strings attached,is really an improvement over the original one which was so overwhelmingly turned down-I THINK NOT.
The unit reps must talk to one another to gague the feeling at the individual units-the BEC do not appear to be prepared to
want to do this.