BD... Come on.
Dividends to 'owners'
That includes us (if you kept your shares) because we also own part of the business. As stated on NATSNET the dividend pot is a separate one which the government regulator allows NATS. In poor years there has been no bonus.
Yes, we get about 1/4000th of 5% each. While dividends were not paid in the tough years, the tough years were largely caused by the leveraged purchase of the company by those 'owners'. If they had come in with cash then I wouldn't grudge them a penny of dividend... They didn't. They've probably already had way more out in terms of dividends than they ever put in to take control in the first place.
Barron & Hoskins
One off payments, agreed as part of their contract and budgeted for accordingly.
Not entirely true. As much as I agree with you that it has to be made clear to people the difference between the financial impact of one-off payments as compared to compounded increases, it fails to take account of the context in which these payments were made and the hypocrisy of the individuals receiving them.
Depends whether you believe them or not. The most interesting point for me was over why not core deal for the very first time as this was seen as the most divisive thing about the whole pay deal. The finger was very firmly pointed at the unions as being the ones who rejected a core deal and each went their separate way for divisional deals.
Why would the unions do that? Look at pay negotiations over the past 10 years. Virtually every time there have been sectional side-deals where management have asked for some section-specific changes in return for a deal. Working practices etc etc. Despite this, NATS and NTUS always negotiated the core increase across all groups. ATCOs always got more than the other groups, but it was through add-ons, so there was at least an appearance of equality.
Nothing that is in this year's deal would prevent that same arrangement this time. Prospect ATCOs could still have achieved a higher return for their memeber than the other groups through agreeing Met or AAVA deal as a sectional claim, while still appearing to keep the unions united by negotiating an across-the-board basic percentage increase.
The only party gaining from splitting up negotiations is NATS management, who can now look forward to all future pay deals being based on a 2 tier workforce of ATCOs and all the other lot who just drain money from the ATCO pot.