Doug the Head - as I live and breathe! I feared you had gone to that great hangar in the sky, but no - you still walk among us, happy as ever. I trust you are still with us in the orange fold, still waiting for Air Utopia to whisk you off your feet and take you to the promised land far from the life of slavery and penury which you find yourself marooned in here at easyJet. This thread has provided me with much to wonder at - first of all we have the people whose entire knowledge of easyJet is that we fly orange Airbuses around the place and sell expensive coffees and sandwiches, but still know so much more about the Company than the pilots that work there. Then we have the Arctic Monkeys of this world, out there in the cold so to speak, who have studiously believed that easyJet is an immoral employer, only to discover that the things people like myself have been saying are actually true after all. I know you are a 'glass fully empty' man yourself when it comes to easyJet, but even you must agree that your dire prophecies over the years have not really materialised. Regarding our cadets, there are literally dozens of them who joined easyJet on £500/month some years ago and who are now earning £100k+ as Captains before their 30th birthday. Hardly a disaster some might say.
We have our principal competition in the form of Ryanair, Vueling and Norwegian who all offer 'Brookfield'-style contracts whereas we offer permanent contracts on clearly stated terms and conditions the day you join. I accept that is due to BALPA, for whom I am profoundly grateful, but we are way better employers than any of them. As you rightly point out, when I joined it was a 6 month probation and that seemed to work fine. If we had to make it a year to get the deal through then frankly it was a price worth paying. A long and painful dispute has been brought to an end by both management and pilots having to bite the bullet and come to a compromise. Not perfect, but way better than the competition. I am amused to hear myself described as a 'management lackie', given that there have been a fair number of people on here who have doubted whether I work for easyJet at all. My position has always been that you have to play the team put out in front of you, and that working together is way better than living in constant dispute. So I have unashamedly voted 'Yes' for the current pay offer and 'Yes' to accept the holiday pay deal - maybe you voted differently (if you are not a freeloader), which is of course your prerogative. I am aware that in a period of economic austerity and actual pay cuts for countless workers in this country, easyJet are giving the best pay deal that I know of anywhere in Europe - but still still that is not enough for a few of our number. Fundamentally, I think easyJet is a great place to work - if that makes me a 'management lackie', then there are an awful lot of us around. Presumably if you could have found a better employer you would have done so by now. Perhaps your job is really not quite the disaster you have for so long believed it to be, and that there are indeed many worse places to work and, dare I say it, not too many better. Whatever the truth, it is a pleasure to read your thoughts once again.