I had the benefit of a Prospect briefing recently, and their case for acceptance was fairly good.
However, it would appear that the reason we're in the position of the BEC recommending an offer that several (myself included) do not think a good one, seems to be a certain amount of apathy by the membership ourselves. How many of us pressed for local unit meetings beforehand, so the BEC knew what we wanted. I didn't! Nor did many of you!
People mention strings attached. The only compulsory string I see is using one non-ops day for operational reasons. All other strings are voluntary. Those at LACC and LTCC that are going to be asked to sell leave and TOIL, and do overtime, my advice is to refuse. If you don't want to make voluntary attendances, then don't. I personally have nothing against you selling leave and TOIL if that's what you as individuals want. I will be disappointed if you sign up for additional attendances.
If we do accept, the bottom line is that basic pay will be 10% higher then it is now. UHP and London weighting will not be.
We will be able to negotiate WPP etc, which could be beneficial if we make the effort to tell Prospect what we want, with respet to issues of UHP and weighting for those living in more expensive areas.
If we reject it, we don't know what we'll get.
The short term part of me says Strike, the long term part says can we do even better when we start negotiating for Jan 2004?
After all, management can't bring the Dec 2003 1.8% in to 2004 calculations if we don't let them. Also, by then traffic will have picked up sufficiently for them to be unable to justify a healthy rise. My concern with the long term view is how many of us union members are going to othered enough to arrange and attend meetings to thrash out what we want before our negotiating team is sent in to the lions den?
In short, I'm still undecided!