I was a March 2010 hire and it is correct that it appears that upgrades have been reduced to 8 per year. This means that I will not upgrade during this contract.
I'm not too happy about it but there is not much I can do other than accept it. As has been said so many times, it was never guaranteed to happen in the first contract.
Oh, and as far as the experience, I have over 10.5k TT and 4K TPIC. So experience really doesn't factor into the equation here.