Dontshootme
You neatly slid the point away from what I was talking about.
Erm, no I didn't, your point was that ATCO's don't work their rostered hours. My response was about those claims. You also mentioned whinging about pay. I replied to that too.
Most NATS ATC units do roster the same number of staff for 3am as 3pm.
With such an obviously incorrect statement like this, you blow your argument completely out of the water. My unit, ScACC, rosters ten on a night shift (plus a supervisor). The morning/afternoon shift will generally roster sixteen or more and they are supplimented by half a dozen day shifts. So in effect there are more than twice the number in during the day.
Grtting back to thos ten night shift workers, that number has been agreed by the usual process of negotiation between management and unions. I don't know what criteria they use to come up with this figure but I suspect it is based on providing enough staff to cover those nights when all the eastbound transatlantc traffic passes through our airspace. That generally arrives from 3 am onwards and the rostering reflects this: four of those ten night shifts come in at some God forsaken hour in the morning.
Of course, some nights we don't get the traffic as it is dependent on the weather patterns. Add to that the ever increasing problems of finding controllers with the correct validations to do band-boxed sectors and you may well see that it might just be a little tricky having staff in positions ONLY when required.
I just don't see why ATCOs or anyone else should be getting paid for sleeping at home.
Hasn't happened on my watch for fifteen years years at least. And for your information, we used to have a load of bedrooms on unit - now we have one.
I'm not denying that there are a few perks regarding the hours we work. It is bound to happen when you try and combine a rigid shift pattern with a traffic flow that is only partly predictable. You will no doubt be delighted to hear that those perks are getting fewer and fewer but when they have gone altogether and the service has not got any better, what are you going to blame then?