"Mal de muchos, consuelo de tontos", spanish proverb
Dear SINGAPURCANAC:
honestly, I get no confort knowing that your conditions at work are, in some cases, worst than ours in Spain (btw, where are you working at?).
I really hope that you didn´t expect me to be any happier if we were whipped twice at work, just because they whipped you more! And I also hope that it is not your desire that every ATCO in the world has your same conditions at work!
When I applied for ATC school in Madrid, we were almost 7000 applicants for 150 seats. After 22 months at school, with a monthly pay of 150 € (thank God my wife had a job to pay the mortage), we were offered a contract with AENA under certain conditions. These conditions are the ones that have been changed by law by this goverment we are suffering in Spain. It is like changing the rules in the middle of a match, just because the other team is not happy with the score. And the referee is also playing for the other team!
One important point that I didn´t put clear enough in the other message: our former 1200 hrs a year did not include vacations or training. If they were included, the total would have been 1500 hrs a year. Now it is 1670 PLUS vacations and training.
Anyway, what is really important here is the fact that all this mess is affecting SAFETY in our system. AENA (their managers) consider that the debt that grew up to 13.000 million € since 2004 (before that AENA had always had benefits) is more important than SAFETY. And we ATCO´s are suffering this philosophy.
Best wishes for your profession, wherever you are ...
Saludos!
P. S. thanks for the sympathy, coolbeans. Very much welcome!
Last edited by p_perez; 27th May 2010 at 16:39.
Reason: Post Scriptum