Many thanks for clearing that up, I was confusing AAVA ban with .....

From Prospect ATCO's Branch Handbook 2008.

Section D3 Superannuation, para (x) page 52.

"(x) The BEC shall ballot immediately for industrial action whenever NATS makes any move to re-negotiate the Pension Scheme that may detrimentally affect new or existing
members.


:ok:

An AAVA ban could be legitimate industrial action .. as long as we are balloted first, as per the policy you highlight :ok:

Unfortunately I don't see the current BEC going down that road. They have stated that the Branch Handbook is full of anomalies and the policy you quote is contradicted by their belief that a policy of the union looking after the interests of its members overrides anything. Therefore, in the interests of their members, they state they are going along with management and recommending the 'proposal' instead of calling for a ballot, which many of us would have seen as a more legitimate form of action.

Ho hum.

24 hours since I asked:

a) If it a no vote what do you actually want the unions to go back and negotiate assuming there is a general acceptance that something has to be done, and I see very few contradicting that fact

and

b) what are you all considering to be reasonable pay rises going into the future bearing in mind there is little left to sell productivity wise.

2 pretty straightforward but fundamental questions in supporting a no vote.

Hello all, a hypothetical question which may become more important the more we delve into the subject.....

If we had not been part privatised and we faced these problems as a fully Government owned company, would we have been allowed to increase our charges to the airlines and pass them through to our pensions or would the Government have had to raid it's coffers to satisfy the trustees and implement an action plan to get the funding level back on an even keel?

My point being that something would have had to be done and they (the Government) would have had to do it. As I understand it, when we were part privatised and were given the trust of a promise, didn't that effectively underwrite our pension protections?

Why do we tend to talk about NATS as if they are solely the Airline Group and that there is nobody else to solve the conundrum. The Government are still the majority shareholders and have a vested interested in our skies operating normally. Could the union have perhaps exerted more pressure on Management and pulled back from negotiations as they were mandated to do once closure of the scheme to new entrants was mooted. Government would have at least been informed of the issues at that stage and our stance on the matter.

As it stands we are the ones who are being asked to make concessions at this stage. I have no doubt changes may have to be made in the future to secure the viability of the scheme but couldn't we have at least put a little pressure on the Government via our negotiating team?

If the current scheme is closed to new entrants what will the underlying cost to the company be to maintain it for those of us still included?
As the years go by and we have no new people joining and more people retiring- hence drawing from the scheme and no longer making contri's, what will the underlying cost become then?
Surely it could feasibly get to the stage where the number of living retirees greatly outweighs the remaining contributors? This would mean that the company would have to meet a proportionally greater underlying cost does it not?

Worst case scenario- 1 person left in the scheme (probably me) making contri's- 2.5k people retired and drawing from it. Will the company fund that?

The new scheme proposed is only semi decent if you pay the max 9% contri's. Not many people starting on 10k will be doing that.
On top of that you're responsible for the way in which your own "pot of money" is invested. This is a real cop out- no guarantees as to what you'll get at the end but as long as the company have matched your contri's x2 they're covered.

Prospect Rep said that this proposed new scheme was a lot better than the one they negotiated for BAA staff. Was BAA's old scheme as good as CAAPS? Are the skill bases and job types between the 2 companies comparable? I don't think they can be but...

250 kts, in answer to your question

a)
I would like the unions to negotiate a deal which does not adversely affect our pension. If this means the Airline group and or BAA have to suffer financially...so be it. If BA did not have to pay the £271,500,000 fine Executives face court over fuel surcharge fixing by BA and Virgin | Business | The Guardian(Some of those responsible will serve jail terms) for fixing fuel price surcharges with Virgin, then perhaps they would not be strapped for cash. In addition following talks with class action lawyers, both airlines have set up a £100m compensation fund for passengers caught out by the collusion between August 2004 and January 2006. BA and Virgin admitted conspiring to fix fuel surcharges.

I personally am not proud to be associated with companies who part own NATS and whose managers are crooks. That is £371.5 millions which our shareholders have lost through greed, dishonesty and incompetence.
Make no mistake BA will have exerted enormous pressure on NATS managers, BAA also, as their new Spanish owners are having severe difficulty now in financing their £10 Billion loan to buy BAA.
And NATS expects us to bear some, maybe all of this cost to bail out two of our shareholders? I am dissapointed that anyone should consider voting yes, but that is their choice.

b)
I would accept a pay rise in line with inflation in the current and forseeable future

And I think we should pressure the union at conference to ballot on suspending the AAVA agreement.

50 Pence,

It's my understanding that the current scheme being a defined benefit scheme means that the pension fund as it stands today has to cover both current liabilities (those in retirement and drawing pension) and future liabilities (those currently in employment). Therefore contributions being made to the fund today do not pay today's pensions, but will pay ours when we retire.

AAVA's
 

If I was offered an AAVA tomorrow, I'd do it, no questions - I'm that strapped for cash at the moment.

If the Union decided to use AAVA's as an official bargaining tool, I would not do them, despite being strapped for cash.

As PPRuNe Radar states, it has to be official to be legal. Now we all know that we cannot be forced to do AAVA's, but until it's an official tactic from the TU, then the majority of people will do the odd one or two

The question of the CAA section of CAAPS was brought up at the briefing yesterday too.
I know they're a separate entity now but their scheme is pretty healthy. They have a surplus and their trustees offered the CAA a pensions holiday this year- they declined.

Their investments are predominantly made in Low Risk Low Yield stocks, bonds, property etc. When it was first mooted that we may have a problem with our fund should our trustees/fund managers not have hedged their bets and commuted some of our funds into similar, safer investments?
On a similar point- the goal of the trustees is to ensure that our assets = liabilities. Given the demise of other final salary schemes whose surpluses had been allowed to be depleted to achieve this equilibrium would it again not have been more prudent to set a goal that maintained at least some surplus to avoid similar pitfalls?

Am I right in thinking that there are NATS Board member(s) who are also Trustees of the scheme? Isn't there a conflict of interests there?

had my briefing yesterday and i'm f#*@ing raging!!http://www.augk18.dsl.pipex.com/Smileys/madred.gif. Various points were made and facts and figures were thrown around in an attempt to blind us with statistics i think. The things i took from our meeting were :

1: NSL is more than likely in the future going to be put up for sale, The pregnant pause by philip at this question said volumes and his suggestion that the rebranding was just to make NSL seem more dynamic and forward thinking seemed like a load of smelly stuff to me.

2. management say they are very embarrased by the webpage on nats net that was being used to extol the virtues of nats and its experience of FULLY privatising, and its knowledge of transferring public sector pensions to private sector. They blamed an over enthusiatic manager for over reaching.

3. The pension surplus was run down to just 100% of liabilities by increases in pay, us living longer (apparently this came as a great surprise to the actuaries, that we are living longer , so they hadn't factored that in) the company using the pension holiday as apparently this is best practice in the pensions game.They say it was done with the full knowledge and agreement of the trustees as best practice dictates. My question to the trustees is yes it may be best practice to run the surplus down so that it funds only 100% of the liabilities, but is this prudent??? it doesnt allow for any negative turn in the investments or unforseen circumstances, so you end up in the situation we are in now where the company comes to the workforce saying we need to make some changes so that we can plan our finances for the next 15 years. Also on the subject of the investments, i was surprised to learn that a significant portion of our pensions scheme was invested in the relavely volatile stock markets i forget the exact figure but it was around 40% ( please correct this if i'm wrong) and only 60% in safe bonds and gilts. Now the CAA run portion of the CAAPS is not in the same mire as us apparently. A much larger proportion of their scheme is in the safer bonds and gilts (around 80%).They were also offered a payment holiday , but they DECLINED?? if best practice dictates that one should take advantage of this then why decline?? could they maybe , perhaps be looking after their pension scheme in a way that NATS were not?

4. if you vote no then , for the union to be able to go back and renegotiate, they need to know what specifically you are voting no for, and what would get you back. they cant go back to the table and say this whole thing is a tub of sh1t, they need a negotiating topic. For me at the moment there is no single topic that i'm not very happy about, i'm just generally pissed off, so will need to think about that.

5. the union believe that this is THE best deal that we are going to get. They may be able to get SOME changes if we walk but it will essentially be the same deal.The briefing was delivered in a matter of fact way, but was definitely aimed at the worst case scenario. There are a lot of unknowns out there. will the government step in and re nationalise. For NERL, probably. For NSL?? not as certain(their words not mine). so do we walk out in sympathy for our colleagues. If nationalised, where does the pension stand. unknown
do we go back in to the CAA part of the pension scheme. unknown
will we be like the french, striking every 6 months to keep every benfit we can? unknown


The overall impact for me from this briefing was very sobering. The PCS guy there seemed to me to be the most genuine person in the room and he was really not happy that he was having to recommend this to his members. He said that he would like nothing more than to tell the barron to go stick his DB9 where the headlights dont shine, but that was not going to change the fact that we have a stark choice to make. The pension scheme is in trouble in the union's and NATS opinion. The government at the moment are not going to bail it out, whether that would change if we walked i don't know. NATS say that they will not be able to afford the increases in the pension scheme for very long and that they would have to consider bankruptcy. AT THAT POINT we are in a totally different ball game. There's no guarantee that the government is going to come riding in on a white horse saying' that's alright boys and girls we've come to take you away from the nasty private sector, here, have everything you want!' so we may have to fight battle after battle to get what we need.

Part of me is really ready to do that. i've had enough like everybody else here of barron feathering his company nest whilst telling us we need to make savings. I've had enough of people chipping away and chipping away at our benefits whilst putting on lavish awards ceremonies at big hotels, and wasting millions on acquiring systems that suddenly fall on a back burner because they are not suitable. I'm tired of seeing new company buzzword and policies being launched with great fanfare and great expense ( i.e destinations, etc) when we are struggling to get equipment that would make our jobs slightly less hard to. I sit with no cross coupled frequncies without a mosaic radar without mode S and still i do my job! i dont ask for any great ceremony from the company to pat me on the back for doing my job, but i would like the penny pinching to stop. Air traffic is a safety related job . Money should not be a factor in the equipment provided to the people doing it. i know this is but a fantasy especially since part-privatisation. Now if a radar goes down at night or at a weekend, the first question asked is do you need it, can it wait til monday. THAT SUCKS.I have had enough of being asked to do things that mean i have to do work on my 30 min break, i'm not doing that anymore, you can f***ing well get on with it! When i first joined NATS i was so happy and proud to be in a well thought of , highly rated job that was well compensated and the staff were, minus the odd person, you know who you all are, generally happy to work for the company. I hate that through all this you have turned me into a cynical person who would no more do something to help out the company than chew his own foot off. I hate that i no longer give a toss what is happening in the future of air traffic, and that all i want to do now is come in , talk to planes, not lose seperation, and go home. That is the sum total of my job satisfaction, and i do really enjoy the actual job, despite my inferences to the contrary. Its challenging, its difficult, some of the people are bloody hilarious and i would miss it if i had to give it up tomorrow.But as far as destinations, awards ceremonies, bar stool session. I cannot be arsed anymore. Thanks NATS, really appreciate it.
As i say this part of me really is geared to fight this. I fear that if the pensions battle is not fought then what use powder. we may as well flood the magazine where all this powder has been stored since '81 and bend over and prepare to be shafted for ever more.

However there is a slighty less militant portion of me that thinks that if the company is in as much sh1t as they say that the worse case scenario is hundreds of job losses, not necessarily to us atco's, but to the atsa's engineers and support staff.Ok i agree some of those nameless faceless people at CTC and other places that seem to get us so riled up we may think we might not miss ( that is not meant as a jibe by the way, i know you probably do fabulous jobs down there, but we atco's are very blinkered in our approach),but its all well and good saying i'm alright jack, but it is a great burden to bear knowing you could be putting some friends jobs in jeopardy.

At the moment i am so angry with both the union for negotiating this and not telling us a damn thing about what they are doing until now. I dont expect them to tell me graphic details, but a quick brief to say that the company is trying to negotiate on a pension related topic may have helped lessen the impact of this. Just saying that yes, you are sorry you had no mandate to go and negotiate on the pensions topic but ' we were looking out for your best interests, really' isnt good enough. Also i'm angry at them for coming out with such a wishy washy excuse when asked about branch policy , stating that we should withdraw from the AAVA agreement if certain things were done. Then when those things were done, just seemingly ignoring it. The prospect atco's rep answer of ' oh well, we have a lot of cotradictory branch policy' is not bloody well good enough. If there is contradictory policy , surely someone should be saying ' hang on, we have contradictory answers to this issue, we better see what the membership would prefer' its not f***ing rocket science.
In my view, Doing an AAVA now is madness in the extreme. Hey if you want to , by all means. work away, earn your extra NON-PENSIONABLE money, Buy your big telly. Sell your annual leave, but please dont be surprised when the company comes later to buy that leave permanently from you. anyway thats a different argument and just my opinion

I am also angry at NATS and the government. They in my view have been deliberately eating in to the surplus and have created a financial mess so big between them that they are now looking at us to bail them out. AGAIN! and the government are just sitting quietly, as a silent partner waiting for barron to do all their dirty work, so that we can be properly prepared for re sale.

so like i said, i wont be making any harsh decisions right now, but i will leave you witha rather scary point from our meeting. The prospect representative did say that if we said no and wanted to walk that he would find it very difficult to go back to prospect and say that they had negotiated a 'class leading' his words, not mine , a class leading deal , but the membership wanted to strike. He said that PROSPECT MAY NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORT the strike. If that happens, my understanding is that any strike would be illegal!

Now thats my two pennys worth, i shall step away from the soapbox. All i would say is do go to any pensions brief you can, this issue is way too important to be misinformed on. Ask your questions, be angry , get the answers you need and make your decision after a lot of thought.
http://www.augk18.dsl.pipex.com/Smileys/angryoldman.gif
now where did i put that application to maastricht.....

fantastic post, much the way I feel and Im sure the majority of the other members at the meeting yesterday!

If the union negotiators cannot go back and renegotiate, isnt it time we got some negotiators that can?

If Prospect wont support us, why are we paying our membership fees again?

And to answer another question, Payrise? Im sure many of us would do without this year to "do our bit". But while they are messing with the pension they can forget it. RPI at the very least!

AAVA's I need the cash, ive done them recently, I might even do them again. Until they are stopped properly. So we stop them now, or how about we play NATS at their game, we renegotiate, how much do they need us to work AAVA's £1K a shift maybe? How about we make this pensionable? There maybe an agreement in place but since when has this stopped the company trying to do what it wants?

Just thinking outloud

Oh and in case any of you are really serious about jumping ship to Eurocontrol....They are no presently recruiting experienced controllers...believe me I have asked!

DFS are though......
DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH - Company & Future
DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH - Company & Future

Doesnt affect me but you guys doing AAVA,s are really shooting yourselves in the foot!!........think of the future for once and not the present!!!

One thing for sure come the 20th October my first and second tranch of shares are going back to NATS......with the present price of 272 valid till 31/12 pricing based on the pension surplus come 1st Jan 2009 they may be worth bugger all!!!.......better get them sold whilst there is some money left in the bank!!

• Moving Civil Service Pensions to Private pensions
• Managing Union expectations throughout the change
• Ensuring compliance with competitions legislation
• Ensuring Regulated side of business does not subsidise unregulated (commercial) side of business

Thanks for spotting the above Jobby Wheecher :}

Now that the Nats website has recovered from "technical difficulties" they are :yuk:
Business consulting services - NATS

•  
  • Working together with Unions through organisational change
  • Ensuring compliance with competitions legislation
  • Ensuring Regulated side of business does not subsidise unregulated (commercial) side of business

Quote from Jobby Wheecher.....

"NATS Business Services website :=
Management seemed genuinely embarrassed that this had sneaked out, and said it was 'a mistake'. You bet it was. But it just shows that they cannot be trusted - this is the prevalent company mentality in NATSworld. It now seems that NATS whole website has been taken down. :D"

NATS = Privatising the profit and socialising the debt

VOTE NO :ok:

Absolutely superb post. :D

Had our briefing today.

The most worrying thing for me is that the Union (that's the Union who supposedly represent its members, who promoted One NATS One Pension- stop sniggering at the back!- blah blah blah) people who were making the Prospect version of the presentation made a far more forceful and believable argument for the proposals than the Management team.

Although to be fair, the Management team weren't much cop. They skirted round or outright refused to answer any questions that went into any detail.

They also failed to dispute or even quell the belief that was openly talked about in our briefing that this is merely a precursor to the sell-off of NSL.

I went into the briefings with a relatively open mind, though leaning towards a 'No' vote. However, the fact that the Management team didn't really answer any of the more difficult questions, coupled with the point about NSL above means it's a resounding 'NO' from me.

There is no doubt about it, we are being fattened up like XMAS turkeys for the big NSL sell-off.
If this proposed pension deal goes through its a done deal.
Vote YES and you are a turkey voting for XMAS


Vote NO :ok:

Taken from NATSnet today - NATS has significant liquidity...we are in a good position
 

NATS’ Press Office moved swiftly this morning to get a story removed from The Times Online, which named NATS amongst a number of companies it said was preparing to renegotiate highly geared debt.

The story, titled “Debt logjam fears as $11.3bn of loans come due”, said NATS was “likely to have to go back to its lenders” in the next six months, and that we had to “renegotiate or pay off almost $500m of debt used to fund capital expenditure…”

It turned out that The Times’ story, which appeared on “NATS in the News” on NATSnet briefly this morning, was based on data provided by a newswire service which was more than five years old, and pre-dated the refinancing of our bank facilities in 2005.

In fact, NATS has no loans to repay until 2012 and no imminent need to refinance our borrowing facilities. We also have significant liquidity – as highlighted by Standard & Poor’s in their report on us in May. NATS has an A credit rating with S&P and an A3 credit rating with Moody’s so in fact we are in a good position at present compared with many companies if we were to require any additional liquidity.


Jane Johnston

Jane Johnston, Head of External Communications, contacted The Times City Desk to get the story removed from their website while Mike Nicholson and his Treasury team investigated how the newswire had obtained its out-of-date information. The story was amended before midday.

“It was a bolt from the blue as The Times hadn’t checked it with us before publishing,” said Jane. “Fortunately they realised very quickly that there was a serious problem with the information and removed it immediately.”


Nigel Fotherby

Nigel Fotherby, Finance Director, added: “Incorrect reports like this can escalate very quickly and cause a lot of damage to our reputation so I’m very pleased that we were able to tackle it promptly.”

Pensions Notice 01/2006 (page 2, item 11) states that NATS retained the cap on earnings, which limits pensionable earnings, that was previously statutory and then repealed by goverment :

HM Revenue & Customs: Rates and Allowances – Pension Schemes see notional earnings cap

Why do we have an pensionable earnings cap if it no longer statutory? Are NATS board members capped in this way? I will have look at the nats annual report later.

Cap is currently £117,600 (maximum pensionable earnings )Is this another change to our pension that was sneaked in?

The cap increases by RPI each year and so RPI+0.5 keeps even the highest earning ATCOs within the Cap for the next few decades. However, RPI+1 average annual pay increase means that top of scale band5 ATCO (for example) will hit the cap in about 27 years time. if RPI+1.5% in about 17 years and so on...

I would suggest that this whole RPI+0.5% is a red herring as NATS management (and NTUS) must know that any meaningful pay rises above RPI will eventually cause the ceiling to be reached sooner. In the long term they get what they want .

F:mad:ers