SGC, this not about duty hours or even a lack of days off. It is an attempt by a weak and ineffectual management, peppered with some megalomania and a few bullies to try and weaken the BALPA representation amongst the pilot workforce. Most pilots believe that the management attitude filters down from the very highest levels.
Considering that it appears to be a pre-requisite for a senior management role within Virgin Atlantic to have some kind of relationship or even an extra-marital affair with either a member of the cabin crew or an employee within the flight ops department, it leaves the integrity of many managers in serious doubt. Again, this is all filtered down from the very highest levels of management within Virgin Atlantic.
The fact is that the pilots have a scheduling agreement with the company which, whilst sometimes a bit confusing, does clearly lay down how their lives are used by the company and how they can get some protection in order to have some useful lifestyle when not on duty. The scheduling agreement is an industrial agreement negotiated and signed by both parties, the Virgin Atlantic management and the pilots elected representative body, the BALPA Company Council.
In 1999 the company entered into a Recognition Agreement with BALPA which means that they will have to negotiate on the pilots terms and conditions. Recently, the flight ops management have resorted to stating that they will only discuss pay, hours and holidays which absolutely goes against the recognition agreement which specifically states terms and conditions. If this alone is not evidence of a breach of agreement then you have to ask yourself "what are the current management trying to achieve?".
None of the pilots are arguing that they do not get at least 120 days free of duty a year. Invariably, because of the type of flying and the size of the fleets and the number of destinations, the pilots will get more than the minimum. The point is, however, how those days free of duty are rostered so that they can plan their lives when not on duty.
It is all very well the "ignoranti" harping on about how lucky those pilots are having so much time off. The pilots and anyone else who has at least a basic understanding of what permanent long-haul flying is about will know that not knowing what days you will be working more than six weeks ahead, can and does have serious consequences on your home life. It is not even similar to some shift workers who, at least, know what their days off, years ahead, will be because of the regularity of their shift changes such as four on four off.
Before the other "ignoranti" jump up and start to compare their working lives with the "flying duty hours" of the Virgin Atlantic pilots who have an agreement in place to limit them to 760 a year, those hours only refer to the time they push back from stand on departure to the time they arrive on stand at their destination. Those hours do not include the many hours before pushback that they report for duty, often at a different airport from the one they will depart from, the many hours spent on training and refresher courses, the days and hours spent deadheading to or from destinations or between them and the hours often spent positioning either to their home base or a hotel that is often a long way from the destination airport.
Again, before the "ignoranti" cry foul and try to compare positioning duty or deadheading as some kind of luxury they should remember that it is all time working at the behest of the company. If the pilot is fortunate enough to deadhead in a premium cabin, it is still time working at the behest of the company and not at home with family or taking care of the multitude of other things that go in to having a life other than work. More importantly, spending as much time as the pilots do in hotels, the quality of which, in many cases is barely acceptable at best, the "novelty" soon wears off as they realise what home comforts really mean.
There will always be multitude of "ignoranti" who assume that the lifestyle of the long-haul pilot is one of glamour. This assumption is not helped by lazy journalists and reporters who perpetuate this assumption. Maybe twenty or thirty years ago, long before the beancounters empowered themselves, it was such. Today, with the bonus oriented management style and the ever cutting "efficiencies" as they like to call them, the glamour is all gone. If you believe the adverts you see on television, you will appreciate that it is "all fur coat and no knickers". This is especially so at Virgin Atlantic.
So, to recap, the planned ballot over industrial action by the pilots of Virgin Atlantic is over interpretation of an agreement about rostered days off. The solution is simple. Abide by the agreement. The easiest and simplest way to achieve that is by rostering less NRDs and more RDOs. On average, only one NRD has to be changed to an RDO each month and the agreement is kept. However, the current flight ops management have stated that they do not interpret it as such and that an NRD can become an RDO retrospectively if the pilot does not have to work the NRD.
Of course, the dispute about 120 days off a year has already been misinterpreted by the media who, unsurprisingly, have shown their usual inability to comprehend or report the true facts as they really are. Whilst it is appreciated that they have limited time and space to explain it in detail, they should make more effort to report it accurately. In a nutshell, it is about the number of RDOs (Rostered Days Off) in the pilots scheduling agreement which the company are have failed to roster and are continuing to fail to roster so that the pilots can plan their home lives a bit more accurately. It is about a failure of management to respect signed agreements.
Current industrial legislation only allows one issue at a time to be balloted. There are several other issues where the pilots and management have reached a "Failure to Agree" and more are pending. It is quite obvious to the Virgin Atlantic pilots that the current management regime is attempting to break the pilots union. Never before has there been such a dismal state of affairs between the pilots and the flight ops management at Virgin Atlantic which they claim is headed by a non flying "captain" who commands little respect from the majority of the pilots.
With the managements stated aim that it will not negotiate "terms and conditions", in clear breach of the recognition agreement, in the upcoming pay negotiations in a month or so, the current ballot is likely to be a rude awakening considering the resolve of the pilots to draw a line in the sand over weak management where the easy path to confrontation is the norm rather than the more difficult but rewarding path to co-operation.
As pointed out by one of the pilots who paraphrased Sir Richard Branson - "Losing My Virginity" (first edition) p 466: "I'm not opposed to unions in principle, but, surely, it's the ultimate expression of management incompetence when a company has to communicate with its workforce via a third party [a union]".