could you give me a rough idea of the pre-December 2010 basic Aena salary for a non-radar-rated Tower ATCO, in an airport of say less than 100,000 movements annually, before any overtime was added on?
I will, but as the bottom line at pprune says, you have no way to know who I am and therefore you can not verify if this is correct.
Therefore I'll provide you with the tools to check what the current salary would be. That basic salary hasn't changed much... the catch was precisely the overtime which allowed that number to double or even triple.
This is the arbiter's resolution and current framework for our work relation with Aena. In page 66 you can see how the different locations are categorised for the purpose of advancing professional levels.
Page 101 shows how the salary is calculated and page 140 shows the tables that formula uses.
Answering your question then, I'd say 3.000 Euros / month (after taxes).
Also, are there not some quiet Spanish airports with less than 1000 movements per month, that could realisitically be AFISO-only operated, and be paid accordingly?
You just scored bullseye
, this is precisely the issue.
This is the link to the official statistics from Aena. As you can see in 2011 there were 16 airports with less than 100.000 passengers (also 16 with less than 10.000 movements... although not the same airports).
If this were a business decission, you would have to make that choice and remove control service from several airports. This was done for example at Burgos, El Hierro and La Gomera. However since this is a political issue it is a hard job to explain to these provinces why they are being downgraded... not to mention to ask the question why there was an airport in the first place.
There are certainly some airports which are a social requirement (I'd say each of the Canary or Balearic Islands needs one) but others is just political vote-gathering. The most recent example would be the one at Castellón, which hasn't opened yet and so far is only a huge waste of money with Valencia at about 1 hour drive.
When the control service at El Hierro was removed, it created a great deal of social discontent so that finally the government decided to "upgrade" the afisos there and now they provide control service. Therefore it is understandable from a political point of view that they don't want to remove control service from other airports but instead want to provide control while paying the same as for fis...
Finally, on the subject of Saerco, does anyone know if their ATCOs, who have gone to complete a course in Prague, are student cadets or previously-rated controllers?
Interesting question ... so far Saerco has made their own selection process of previously uneperienced people to send them to Prague for training. They have refused to hire experienced controllers or those poor guys who paid Senasa 50k for a student license.
Speculation goes that their profit is not really providing control services at 3 minor canary airports (+ the closed one at Castellón) but rather at providing training... 200 trainees at Senasa paying 50k each would seem to validate that..