Providing for DECs in union agreements?
I was chatting to a skipper the other day who joined EK as a DEC. Having previously been in a heavily unionised carrier, DEC's are new (well, except for in one particularly badly handled episode in the old crowd) to me.
Were your company to recruit DEC's, what would your opinion be? Do you think , as I do, that a certain number being included in the recruitment/upgrade figures each year:
a) brings advantages to flight ops departments as long as external experience is valued and shared (and not beaten down because 'well, that's not how we do it at [insert every airline ever]')
b) gives people the chance to avoid the (predominantly) geographical handcuffs that the LHS seems to apply, if they should decide that they want or, of course, need, to move to another part of Europe, the UK etc...without changing from Manchester to, say, Guangzhou, which seems rather a large jump (depending on where you live in Manchester, of course).
c) the biggest reason I have for supporting DEC's is...me. My current employer is about as secure as you can be, but I can't imagine losing your job as a 10 year skipper and being given the choice of going back as a year 1 F/O on less than half your current salary (being unable to pay for school fees, mortgages, etc) or going to China, Turkey, the Middle East (for those who don't like it), or Pakistan. I certainly don't want to be presented with those choices as my only options should the worst happen, and therefore I can't expect that others should be restricted to them.
I've always said that I would be a supporter of allowing a certain percentage (say 20% or so) of all recruitment/upgrade requirements each year being opened up to DEC's. Yes it would affect my upgrade time, but it also gives me security (to a degree) that should the worst happen, I'm given the option of massive financial stress or going to the other side of the world and getting home once a month.
The current system is absurd...my father has been in law for 30 years. Should he get laid off, he wouldn't go back to being an article clerk and absolutely shouldn't do. It's absurd! Do you want a surgeon going back to work as a junior doctor? Who the hell came up with this?!
Is it just me?!