Well said DC10! By the way , how's life now you are free of all this bull@hit?

Autothrottle.

I am just peachy thank you. It was all this bull!!!! that prompted me to bail out. Nowadays my life revolves around flying aeroplanes, football, and fishing. I still care very much about friends and colleagues having to put up with this crap hence some of my postings.

If only the union had the balls and led with this feeling that the majority of employees seem to feel and tell NATS to stcik it where it doesnt shine or we walk.
But my confidence in the union sadly does not match my feelings with the regards to the company and their blatant bully and scaremonger tactics.... I feel as strong as the employees do feel, the reality is that we will be dealt another crap management originated blow as once again the union buckles and are far to 'cosy' with what management want and let them take, take, take.....
When is it going to end ?
Hopefully, later this year may see a good change of personel in the union with new people coming in of which I will happily put my name forward for. It's not that historically they have underperformed, but the recent issues of pension and pay seem to show that a changing of the guard may do us all some good and hopefully a fresh and harder stance with management and represnt what the members actually want!!!

Most pension scheme members do not enjoy the protection in legislation that we do. Even if NATS management wished to do that they cannot and they are well aware of that. In the absence of the MOU they could try to force out those who've joined since 2001 but the majority of those are controllers (most other branches have been under a recruitment freeze for much of the time since then) so they aren't likely to do that.

Thanks to Gordon Brown's £700 million looting of NATS, an RPI-x regulation and years and years of little or no investment under Government ownership there haven't been any good years in which to stock up.

Whether or not those going are going with a smile on their face is irrelevant. Those jobs will be gone for good whatever happens to income in the future and those left behind will still be expected to deliver exactly the same with less staff.

In my opinion the criticism of the unions (plural) is unfair. The PCS union is organised and led by very able and experienced negotiators whose knowledge is encyclopedic. Individually they may not be liked by the management but they are respected due to their personal politics and philosophy. Unfortunately the Prospect people do not have any of these attributes and it is sometimes difficult to see whose side they are on.

DC10
 

Spot on old buddy. Respect to the union guys who do their best. However: as long as the outdated "officers and men" culture of yesteryear continues, there wil be no possibility of one combined ATC union. There MUST be change........or there wil be slow death by a thousand cuts. After the pension result we need to see some movement our way.......and if I am presented with another joint management-union exercise.....that will be the end of any hope that the union is focused on its membership rather than a cosy relationship with the status quo.

It's not often you find yourself wishing you were older, but VR is not yet an option for me.

I just hope the erosion of pension, terms & conditions etc last long enough for me to bail out.

As for Vision 2011, is this what they meant by "liberating and motivating people"

:yuk:

I do feel that 055166K is right, the union issue is an historical hangover which has been incorporated into NATS and its present culture. There are no officers and men any more only employees. The more that the atcos consider themselves a cut above everyone else, at least in their own minds the more the management must laugh at their pretentiousness and your collective stupidity in not having one union for all with its associated collective strengths.
I must confess that for once amongst the many management initiatives over the past thirty years I felt that Visions 2011 did strike a chord with me as I felt "Liberated and Inspired" to bail out of NATS asap.

I'm just glad we've kept our powder dry - maybe we can sell it off to the French... they must be running low on stocks by now, surely?

I think we may have forgotten where we actually stockpile our powder...:ugh:

I hope Hampshire County Council haven't used it to replenish dwindling grit stocks. We'll probably find NATS did a deal with them, but like the sale of the old Heathrow tower, we won't be told about it until any future negotiations are over.

Any news on the hugely overdue pay negotiations yet?

The pensions were cited as a stalling tactic in the first instance, now VR's are being cited.
Are management not really just making things progress so slowly because they want to make sure the economy is at it's weakest before they agree to anything (or more likely, agree to nothing)?

Great tactics by the way though - the longer we wait, the more NATS will bleat about the failing economy. Every day is another nail in the pay 'negotiations' coffin.

Pay awards should not be tied into how much we save through VR's. Redundancies or more to the point, cutting needless jobs/roles, should be done anyways, and should not be a factor.:=

Reference further changes to the pension scheme.

The NSL Chief Exec came to our place on his roadshow last week. He allegedly told management they were going to come back to us with a request for further changes and no doubt degradation of the pension scheme.

Interestingly no one turned up to either session to listen to the senior management waffle. Has the turn out been the same at other NSL units?

Wasn't even aware he was on a roadshow!

Going along to the roadshow was compulsory at the end of a shift for my watch at Farnyburrow, fortunately LH cancelled at short notice so we had a new ATSOCAS brief instead.

SH

Geffen, we were one of the first units he visited early in January.

We'll do this to stop people leaving........
We'll do that to stop people leaving......
We're also looking into doing that to stop people leaving.......

Nothing about working out how they might entice people to stay. :}

Oh yeah, I seem to recall that now. It left such an impression...

SILENTHANDOVER
How can you be made to go to a briefing at the end of a shift, what you do at the end of a shift is up to you We have watch briefing before a afternoon shift, attendance voluntary

Our briefings are before our afternoon shifts and are mandatory. The WP allows three days each year spare, one is TRUCE, the other two are divided into 4 lots of 2 hours and used for 4 watch briefings, and 4 safety briefings or anything that is deemed sufficient to demand the use of the time.

Gonz

"We'll do this to stop people leaving........
We'll do that to stop people leaving......
We're also looking into doing that to stop people leaving......."

I bet he wasn't actually referring to ALL of the EGLL ATC grades when he told you this :hmm: some of us just have to accept things are moving on, and certain people's tasks are soon going to 'belong' to others.

BTW - any LPOs want to borrow my SAMOS training guide? :E

No White Hart...you keep it. I don't want SAMOS. I want an ATSA 2 by my side.

Keep the 2's!!

Get rid of the pointless Business Support Manager, the Engineering Manager and the other waste of space that sits in his office next to ops and that should fund many ATSA 2's.