Daermon, thank you once again for enlightening us further on the bottomless can of worms that is Spanish ATC, and indeed your own predicament, wherever you are.
Not sure if you spotted it but I actually did refer to your quote of €4.5m in my last post... I'm still speechless at the thought that any government could expect any citizen to pay such a fine, regardless of how many years they were wrongly earning a footballer's salary. Nevertheless Spain is a monarchy and it seems that whatever the dictator-like hatchet says, the hatchet gets... incredibly unjust as it may be.
Firing people.. surely this cannot be done unless you breach certain clear guidelines..? Not just because you
rightly earn more than your junior staff, who are just starting off in their careers, while you have 10+ years experience and multiple ratings...? Although €30k doesn't in all honesty appeal overwhelmingly, considering that some of these student controllers could very soon find themselves in some busier tower environments. But hey, Spain is obviously
en crisis and employers are calling the shots and able to drive salaries offensively low.
Promotion prospects... apart from becoming a Tower Chief at a busier airport, thats probably as far as the FerroNATS cul-de-sac goes. One would need to go elsewhere within NATS itself methinks to get any further promotion. (Don't forget that in another 10 years, Remote Virtual Tower technology could well be the norm across much of the developed world, and in NATS' case, looking remotely after at least 40 of the airports in Spain from a remote barn in Wales! ..or something like that).
Bank holidays... is there not, like in other countries, a system whereby, if you work a bank/national/church holiday, you get a day-in-lieu or some sort of overtime? As you rightly say, at least now there is a cap on the annual number of ordinary and overtime hours you can work, unlike before, so one should have adequate time off..
OJTIs... well that system employed by Aena is clearly plain wrong; not everyone is suited to being or wants to be an instructor, so it should not be forced. I assume in any case there is some form of remuneration for being one?
Pamplinas! Apologies if I came across as 'shouting out', but your attitude has at times come across as intimidatory in previous posts.
Yes, I have understood enough of the labour law to realise that a permanent contract should in theory be just that.. permanent.. and workers can be disposed of with nil, or as you say minimal pay... but only for a valid offence. Otherwise, a court of law should surely come into play. In any case, are you only referring here to your own vulnerable T&Cs with Aena, as ruthless as they have become against ATCOs, or are you referring to every other Spanish employer also? That they too can equally dismiss employees unfairly, for no valid reason?? If that is so, then obviously whats 'permanent' today, can be gone tomorrow, and the system as a whole is a complete farce. For example,
la policía in their various forms... do they, among other government departments, not have permanent contracts?
I've mentioned the bank/national holidays earlier to Daermon, but would still like to know if you are reimbursed for working them. If the 1670 (+ 80 overtime) annual hour limits are adhered to, then that is as much a 'normality' as anyone can expect, and should ensure that staff are not crazily overworked as before.
Regarding empathy and solidarity... don't start me! Yes pamplinas, I agree with you that this is definitely not the ideal solution to solving the problem (but what is???), by 'ousting' staff and families out of their home environments, in order that they may somehow struggle to maintain their (in most cases inflated and greed-driven, albeit earned-by-the-clock) salaries. (Maybe when the good times rolled, you all bought mansions, yachts and sportscars, building up massive debt, or maybe you all just got too used to a good thing... and then when the gravy train ran low on fuel and when the footballer salaries were slashed, you behaved like spoiled brats, wanting to keep all your candy).
I mean, the cold reality here is that Aena, through their own gross mis-management and through collective agreements with the union USCA, built up a debt of €1.2 billion (possibly the largest ever debt for any ANSP per head employee), €785 million of which was attributable to some 2300 ATCO salaries alone! Who's fault was this pamplinas??
Surely then a radical overhaul must begin somewhere?? Either in the form of privatisation starting from the 'grass roots' of the Control Towers... or else widespread dismissal a la Reagan style, as eloquently posted (in the LEBL EIN A320 thread), by Heathrow Director who, like many of us, is "
all for workers rights and fair representation of workers but what you had here was a bunch of highly paid public servants who milked the system dry and when the country was facing financial ruin tried to hold it to ransom and continue to do so. For that they should, as has been said above, all be sacked. Reagan style." And then all be re-hired again at lower salaries. (Not necessarily as low as FerroNATS, mind you). I mean, was Zapatero, the previous prime minister, not earning something like €95k a year, according to a list of national salaries published some years back? How then can you ever justify the hundreds of thousands that you have earned over the same period? And all the while, when
safety, the single most important aspect of all, suffers the most.
Sonnendec, and others like him, can complain all they want about not winning sympathy from anyone. But now its no longer about lowered terms and conditions, or even about inefficient or preferential controlling and enforcing SIDS, STARS and filed flight plan routes... its now about safety, people's lives, about forcing crews to declare PAN-PANs so that they can hope to land somewhere. I mean, seriously.. you guys have lost all chances of any sympathy vote from any dog on the street, let alone every pilot, controller and aviation enthusiast that reads this forum. Your own downfall has been your own greed, and the sooner you all realise that and come back down to austerity-stricken earth, the better for you. And the sooner you start to do your jobs properly, the better for the rest of us.
By the way, for the benefit of any non-Spanish can any of you please explain whats going on here..
Acoso laboral de Aena a los controladores del Centro de Control de Torrejón y censura informativa - YouTube ?