My apologies for the limitations of "Google Translate", this was posted today by PARAT the umbrella Union of which NPU is a part.
If you "read between the lines" a bit, and substitute the Word "Norwegian" for "English" (why does it do that ? ? ) it is fairly readable.
Parat, via Google Translate
Freedom
Pilot Life at English
02.03.2015Anonym mate
The majority of my friends on Facebook who do not know the conditions of Aviation has no knowledge and ability to understand what we strikes, and therefore can easily come to buy the company's propaganda.
The post below is written by a helmsman in English, and shared on Facebook. Parat know the identity of the mate who has written the post, but who wish to remain anonymous.
Dear Facebook Friends.
This is a long post, sorry for that, but it is a complex issue that can not be explained by three sentences.
As you probably have got with you in the media is Norwegian pilots now on strike. We know that this creates some problems for anyone who plans to travel with us as long as it is ongoing. This is something we very sad. Our employer is also trying to defame us with media initiatives where high wages we have and how spoiled we are. Whatever I had to write to you about my views on the matter will surely be subjectively since I am a party to the conflict. However, I thought to share some objective facts.
I have spent 15 years of my life and overall more than a million dollars on education and maintenance of certificates, Typeratings and sundry. I have moved around the world in 10 years in pursuit of the "big job" with stability and orderly conditions. Meanwhile social and family have been put on hold.
I am 44 years and have not the opportunity to purchase their own housing due to lack of equity. It is used to get where I am today as helmsman on B737 in English. This sounds like whining and I regret? No, not the slightest. Had I failed to do this and developed my skills in the job I had before I started to fly as I had today been a sales manager in a larger company with fringe benefits, good pay and had repaid the house I bought in 1993 and which today is worth over three million. I regret? No, even a bad day in the air is better than the best day I had in office with a burning desire to fly. Just want everyone to know that they do not come into this job without sacrificing much on the road.
What is amazing conditions we have as an employer says makes us too expensive and spoiled? In my case it is as follows:
- An officer position with a salary in a salary rise beginning at 300,000 - and tops out at approximately 690 000, - I am a piece up on the ladder after three years in the "company"
- In addition we have the diet that we are on a business trip and will be covered expenses for having to acquire food outside the home, and as you might know it is not entirely free to eat out in the motherland.
- We can sell a day off and then we double day's wages, in other words the same as other people have about them working overtime by 100%. Is that so unreasonable?
- We have a loss of license insurance that is payable if AME takes away from us our medical certificate so we must stop flying. It is not something we can "take out" nor is anyone interested in it, because we want to fly. If we have to stop flying so we have no competence to enter into another profession other than low-paid unskilled jobs. This insurance is to cover the huge investment we have made to get into the pilot profession and cover, to a certain extent, some of the lost revenue. It is currently at 60G (5.3 million) but stepped down from age 51, so if you lose the certificate as 58-59 year old so most people who do it are, then it greatly reduced to only 15-20% of this. We must pay tax on insurance premiums and
pr. date, this means that I have almost 5000, - kr. paid less per month.
- We have a defined benefit pension that will give us 60% of annual salary from we go by that pilot until National Insurance enters at 67 years of age. (At 30 years of qualifying, I'm going to clear max 20 years and thus significantly less). This pension insurance we have because we are legally required to stop in our profession several years before we get a pension from the state, what should a living off then?
- To get the collective agreement with the conditions I have described above, I am available for the company up to 13 hours per. day for 5 days followed by 4 days off. Disposable all day, everyday as holiday, Christmas and Easter, max one weekend per. month free. According EU legislation, we can fly a maximum 900 hours per year, but this is only the time in the air. We can have up to 2000 hours working hours (time from attendance until we go home, possibly in a hotel). Last year I flew 897 hours, but it's just the time in the air. On a day with 6 hours of flight time, I often 8-10 hours working time.
- Sometimes begin my work hours at. 4:30 in the morning and lasts 12 hours. During the 12 hours I have not break and must eat food in the cockpit while I'm flying and sitting and calculating data for the next landing to take place in a short and smooth path, and in the dark in Finnmark with 150 passengers behind me. Other times we start late at night and flying trip - return Mediterranean / or the Canary Islands in 9-13 hours without a break to land again at home into the morning hours.
We are except from the Working Environment Act what it comes breaks and working!
- We live as glamorous, we travel around the lies in hotels? Yes, sometimes having flown / worked in 9-11 hours we arrive into a hotel at. 11:00 p.m. after the restaurant has closed. But that's okay, I have some crackers in my bag. And then we picked at. 5:30 the next day before breakfast is opened, but it is okay for kl. 7:00 when we get in the air so'll buy the company a dry Sandwich on me that I can eat while I'm planning approach to next destination. Glamorous?
Those who have famille with children can never know whether they will participate in birthdays, confirmations, Christmas, football games etc. etc.
For this I had on previous paycheck paid 29 500 kr. Had albeit holiday in parts of January, when I have full diet I end up at around 33 000, - paid because of the high taxes on insurance. Is it unreasonable?
The last eight years have wage settlement in Norwegian adjusted salary up by less than the consumer price index so that real wages have declined. Last year adjustment + 0.7%
The reason that this year we ended strike:
Some history about English.
Norwegian started its low cost operation in Norway with B737 for something over 10 years ago in a tough market and with limited resources. Extremely motivated staff both in Cockpit and cabin and on the ground made it a great success. Eventually went expansion out to Sweden and Denmark and the pilots there was the same collective bargaining agreement as the Norwegian. There was only one employer and one pilot group. The pilots were flexible and worked hard to deliver a good product to the passengers, there were problems due to weather / technical so asked people happy and worked extra. This resulted in trust by the employer and gradually improving the conditions negotiated.
In 2011 opened Norwegian base in Finland but this time, instead of hiring pilots in Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA on applicable collective agreement, then offered the pilots began where a contract with an Estonian employment agency owned by a Norwegian with miserable conditions. No insurance, no pension, no tax, no social security (ie sick pay etc. all we have in Norway due. We pay social security contributions and payroll taxes). This avoided airlines having to pay payroll and having an employer responsibility. Everything that is in Nordic labor laws came they then clear away.
Employment on such a contract is completely absent, Norwegian may terminate the contract with the agency with one month's notice and unions are excluded. Open your mouth and protest anything so you will be prompted to submit the uniform, then it straight out. What effect do you think this has on aviation safety with a view to enroll sick or refraining fly if one is tired?
Further expansion in Europe with new bases in Spain and eventually England was made similarly. But the main production was the still from Scandinavia as our colleagues on contract with bad conditions were flown in to Torp, Gothenburg and Oslo to produce flights to the Mediterranean and sometimes even domestic. I was first employment agency contract even with so-called base Malaga and then I flew including Torp Berlin Torp Evenes-Torp.
By expansion to long routes started the company under company in Ireland that have significantly poorer labor laws. This is because Norway will not grant exemptions from laws that made it impossible to use cabin crew from Thailand on the tacos terms.
The pilots in Scandinavia and our union so the which way the bar, we were to be replaced!
Negotiations for the past 3 years has not acted to improve our conditions, but to retain what we had and get attached principle that we should not be outdone by the pilots in their own company on social dumping contracts. This has meant that it has been on the verge of strikes in the last 3 years but in the last hour and overtime, our leader signed a protocol and agreement in principle that we should retain the existing company structure and production in Scandinavia - a deal that the company has broken at the first opportunity and more or less have not bothered.
Now it is clear in Norwegian working life, that in the time between negotiations are called peacetime, and thus does not have any forms of action available is legal, such as strikes. The company has therefore been able to persist them have willed without our pilot union has been able to do other than to report cases to the Labour Court. Judiciary grinder templates unfortunately slowly and meanwhile the company has come up with new twists. All cases that have been tried so far has given pilot union pursuance of breach of contract, but in the meantime, the company has found something new.
The biggest threat came last year while the union and the company put into negotiations on a new collective agreement for the permanent employees pilots (Norway, Sweden, Denmark.) The company created three staffing companies: Norwegian Air Norway, Norwegian Air Resources AB and Norwegian Air Resources Denmark. The transferred pilots in Norwegian Air Shuttle to these companies and went to Stockholm and Copenhagen and offered pilots where temporary agency contracts. Our collective in Scandinavia was split into three agreements with Agencies.
The only thing that stopped the strike last year was that Kjos signed that we still would get a common collective agreement for these three countries, a deal he has since broken.
In this year's negotiations the company wanted to raze our current agreement with major reductions in wages, pensions and insurances. Our association said they are willing to discuss and let both pensions, salaries and insurance in the pot. In addition, we should move from a fixed rota system to a fully variable a, and lose control of large parts of our holiday. In return demanded the pilots that we should have a collective agreement with the "real employer" which is the parent company Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA and a common seniority list for the group. This was totally unacceptable and the company would not an inch of this. And we understand the why, it would have been a brake on divide and conquer strategy to our beloved leader.
The company has just submitted a large deficit and claim that we in Scandinavia have been too expensive and too inflexible. Fact is that we still flying the same routes profitable domestic and southward as we have done all the time, apart from the routes that have been taken away from us and given to contractual bases in Europe.
The big losses coming by Norwegian commitment to long routes with B787 separate from our production and all the antics of reorganization that has given huge costs.
The company claims they went to mediation with a desire to reach the finish and avoid a strike. Simultaneously signed the contracts with charter companies to fly our production and flew up contractors to Scandinavia from contractual bases for conducting strikebreaking. Then it is probably fair clear it was never its intention and avoid strike ?!
The company claims this is not a strike wrestling because when staffing firm Norwegian Air Norway can not deliver pilot services to them during the strike so it is free for them to use pilots from another staffing agency in Spain or England. In other words they make it that we have feared, and set come in 3 years.
The company has operated for the past 3 years is a gradual positioning of the them do today:
Union Crushing!
So far I have written objective facts and not guesswork. But if I should predict further development with my subjective opinion is the one that follows:
-Plan To Kjos and Co. are now and beat Norwegian Air Norway bankrupt and then we are 650 pilots in Scandinavia unemployed and can not strike or have union because "the company" we are "employed" in no longer exists.
- The moment he turned NAN bankrupt and we all 650 are unemployed so there is suddenly a lousy contract from a new staffing company in the mailbox with the message that the 450 first signs have jobs, while the rest are out. This will be individual agreements without union affiliation so that one is without any assurance that organized labor in Norway provides. They hope then that people without jobs in fear signing.
The way English has behaved in the past 3-4 years, a clear violation of the Scandinavian model in the workplace we have had over the last 100 years.
We are returning to the raw turbo capitalism that existed in the early 1900s before the labor movement got fought through a regulated workplaces.
This is the battle we are fighting against Ryanair.
- Officer in English