hold at SATAN

slightly off track but relevant nonetheless...

Underlying pension costs to NATS? Why are they double the percentage contributions NATS makes? surely if an employer contributes 20% of staff pay to a fund, their costs are 20%, no?
The 6% employees contributions form part of the staff salary.

Am I missing something?

Point Seven

The fortunes that are paid out under SOAL are due to Nats not succession planning adequately enough and, as a result, not having staff where they should.

There is no way we should be even contemplating giving up anything to the company at the moment - there is a completely one way flow of goodwill in Nats right now, and has been for a while.

It's about time we stood together or that flow will never reverse.

viaEGLL

Having attended a pension brief today i have a few concerns;

1. What happens in 4/5/6 years time and NATS come back to the union saying
" sorry RPI +.5% wasn't good enough and we need RPI -0.5% to make the shortfall the actuaries were wrong" ?

2. I accept the scheme does have to close due to the expense but close and have the RPI cap! this seems all one side i.e. NATS!

3. What happens in 15yrs when the ratio is 40% - 60% and the Prospect members re vote over our pension and they "go with the majority" as they told me today?

4. There is no plan B and by voting NO i was told " i would be rolling a dice with my pension"!

5. The current Banding is frozen at the moment. What happens if they ever re band in the next 15yrs? Does this mean they will cap the relevant increase into your pension?

6. If the NATS contribution falls below 18% the NTUS will (at that time and off cuff) negotiate a deal for the money being saved and then pass it on to us! Very wishy washy!

7. If we go bust then the new NATS we work for will be able to change the pension scheme without consultation? Is this correct?

So, i think there are too many loose ends and i will probably vote NO! I think there is a better deal to be had.
At the end of the day i need to secure my retirement with the best possible deal without the words " it was a tough 2 yrs of meeting look how well we have done" more like you should have played hard ball just like Paul Barron did

Cuddles

I do wonder if we've shot ourselves in the foot slightly re. AAVAs, after all, if our days off were sacred, we wouldn't be doing them. By coming in on AAVAs / SOAL we're highlighting to the company that:-

1. We believe we get plenty time off work
2. That time off work can and will become time in work, for a price.

mr.777

Have just been reading about the UK bank bail out and the fact that several chief execs have resigned with no severance pay...also, there will be no executive bonuses paid whilst the banks are under the control of the govt.
It strikes me that when we face losing £5-10k of our pension a year, then the very least that our union should be pushing for is that our chief exec should leave with NOTHING next year...or the hit on our pensions is lining his pocket. In the current economic climate his 13% payrise last year is obscene and a slap in the face to everybody below management pay grade. Just a thought.

Hial Flyer

The worrying thing is that there are a lot of people coming out of these briefings believing the bankrupcy bulit.

We need to be convincing those people that they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Air.Farce.1

From my previous post..

"Legal Status and Ownership

NATS Holdings Ltd is the holding company for NATS Group. It owns NATS Ltd, which in turn owns two operating subsidiaries: NATS (En-Route) plc (NERL) and NATS (Services) Ltd (NSL). The Airline Group Ltd, a consortium of seven airlines, has the majority of voting rights and 41.9% of the shares of NATS Holdings Ltd. The Secretary of State for Transport owns 48.9%, BAA plc 4.2%; and NATS Employee Sharetrust Ltd 5%.

The Government is the major shareholder (48.9%) and NATS cannot go into administration. There is a good reason why they still part own it... because NATS is essential to the UK both economically and from a safety and security aspect, thus NATS will not be allowed to go into administration -even if it could."

In addition just rememember why Nats shareholders are in deep financial sh1t. BA (one of the airline group) was fined £120 million last year for fuel surcharge price fixing with Virgin (another one of the airline group) The BA managers responsible are now facing jail.
Also NATS reportedly lost £120 million over the AENA SACTA Spanish deal last year. Thats £240 million which could have boosted our pension! And BAA's new Spanish owners are struggling to finance their £10 billion loan.

Make no mistake NATS management are extremely worried they might lose out big time
They will tell you anything to sway you over the Pension proposals. Don't beleive them......

vote NO

Fletchers Left Boot

Loxley:
These are questions I would very much like answers to.

If the main scheme has similar problems to the ones we apparently have, then maybe I may just be persuaded away from a 'no' vote, depending on whether any safegauards are built in.

AS things stand, there is nothing to persuade me in any way to vote anything other than a big fat NO.

As for trying to bribe us into signing away leave entitlement if the rumours are correct.... OI!!! NO!!

hold at SATAN

How does the CAA pension fit in with the NATS element of CAAPS?

Air.Farce.1

I asked [email protected] who deals with the CAAPS

"If NATS shareholders were to go bankrupt would my pension ( CAAPS) be safe if the Government nationalised NATS fully, or if another company took ownership of the Airline group and BAA shares ?

I will post the response asap

kinglouis

and what about those who joined after 2001 but are still on the same pension as us?
#will they be protected?

Air.Farce.1

I suggest each individual asks Nick Perry

Roffa

HIAL is no longer a member of CAAPS I believe. They transfered their pot into the Scottish Office or some other part of the government pension fund up there.

eglnyt

HIAL created their own pension scheme a few years ago.

The CAA section of the pension fund is interesting because at some point in the future it is likely to face the same issues. The main cause of all this pension problem is pensioners living longer and it is unlikely that their pensioners will have a significantly different profile. The CAA board is not subject to the same restrictions on trading at a loss as the NATS board so they could possibly continue to fund their part of the scheme as costs rise but either the government will have to make up the shortfall or the CAA's charges will have to rise. Given that by then all the airlines and NATS will have had to act on their own schemes I can't see any of them taking kindly to propping up the CAA scheme especially as it is the CAA telling NATS it can't recover its pension costs using increased charges.

What happens if NATS becomes insolvent will be covered in the Trust Deed. It will almost certainly make provision for closure and winding up of the scheme if the company stops paying and the trustees are unable to secure alternative contributions. Mr Perry won't be able to tell you what political solution will be found to avoid that happening because nobody will know until the time comes but some solution will be found.

PH-UKU

Well why not take the chip off your shoulder, invest your RAF pension, get a licence and go operational then?

How many active controllers in NATS ? 1400 ?
How many ATSAs ? 800 ?
How many engineers ? 800 ?
That leaves an awful lot of incredibly important support jobs. I know how really important they are because my job as an ATCO has been made SO very much easier this last 3 years, obviously as a result of all this fantastic support. Thank you thank you.

However, how many of these incredibly important pixies are actually non-essential blunties or middle managers doing job-creation $hite, spending lots of works time browsing the net, organising dances and incredibly important award ceremonies, making propaganda videos, PR guff, re-ordering desks, studying coffee contracts, redesigning spreadsheets, visions, destinations, buying gerbils etc..etc..?

A lot of 'our people' only earn what they earn because they work in "Air Traffic Control" and get off on reward-by-association. We all know that the sexy part of the job is actually pushing tin - but guess what folks, it really does take skill and a hell of a lot of training to do it well. Sadly many in NATS don't even know that we are a 24hr operation, and even less what ATC means - yet .... many seem to resent those that work unsociable hours, as if we are some untidy part of the organisation.

Anyway - away from Bluntie-land. How do others go about protecting their pensions ... ?

BP Tanker Drivers

BAA Strike threat

Is this the same Prospect ... ?

BA Pilots #1

A whiff of hypocrisy .. or deja vu ? .... surely not ?

BA injects £500m in return for salary cap ?

ZOOKER

PH-UKU,

SMOKIN'!!!

Scuzi

At one of the meetings today, the subject of life expectancy for controllers was brought up. Apparently there is a study which concludes that the majority of ATCOs die within 5 years of retirement. Is this true and if so, can anyone point me in the direction of the study? If it is true it is quite a sobering fact.

When the question about the source for life expectancy figures was raised, they sort of fluffed the answer and suggested that they had taken into consideration a reduced life expectancy for ATCOs but they didn't categorically state that this was the case.

BDiONU

Hhhmm, I was responding specifically to the comment that CTC car park is empty weekends. I made the point that many CTC staff aren't in jobs which require weekend/night working whereas operational staff often are, hence the difference. I also made the point that operational staff are compensated for working unsocial hours. Quite how that translates into a chip I don't know, although you yourself appear to be well balanced having one on each shoulder about 'support staff' without any apparent knowledge of what the full picture of an ATC operation is. Your sort of post really doesn't help anyone, its divisive, why post it?

Onto your personal comment. I made a conscious decision not to move from RAF ATCO to civil ATCO for a variety of reasons too boring to go into on this forum. When I first joined NATS I was in a job which attracted 100% UHP. Over the years my job changed and I no longer receive it, I could argue that I've had a £5000 pay cut. However my job is extremely interesting and challenging which makes up for that loss of earnings, but it would still be nice to have the extra cash

BD

Air.Farce.1

BDiONU

quote

" Hhhmm, I was responding specifically to the comment that CTC car park is empty weekends"

Are you still going on about the "empty car park"

Try to focus "outside the box" and take a hyperopic view of that car park at CTC

Del Prado

1) If there's one thing we've learned from the present financial turmoil it's that bonuses and incentivised pay encourage short termism that is very often at odds with the long term good of the company. Given this fact and the financial sacrifice NATS is asking of their staff would it not be right and proper that Mr Barron forego his bonus this year as an act of good faith?



2) If there was a pay deal on the table where we got a significant increase for giving up 6 days leave, most of that pay rise would be non pensionable due to the RPI+0.5 cap.
Most pay deals are not straight forward raises but involve us finding savings through sacrificing our terms and conditions. This RPI cap is going to shaft us in ways we haven't even thought of.