Ok, let's review the history of the past 20 years:
- we have continually negotiated away some of the best aspects of our contracts
- the things we assumed we had 'gained', were then subsequently taken away arbitrarily by the company
- by default we ended up with NO gains, and the loss of all the valuable contract provisions
It is pretty obvious what we need to do: We need to categorically refuse to negotiate on ANY item we currently have, and instead fight to re-acquire the contract provisions that were 'stolen' from us.
A list of current items that MUST stay non-negotiable:
1) 84 hour overtime threshold
2) 42 days leave (for those who have it, and seek to obtain that for those who don't)
3) W-patterns
I'm sure many of you can think of other items to add to this list. It is beyond belief that we have lost 8 weeks leave, 5-4-3, A days etc. Forget 'negotiation'. We need to fight to get back what was taken. In future, we need to not be so naive and foolish.