It begins...
 

The Red Barron has announced the beginning of the 'cost saving' exercise... Redundancies to you and me...

Any news on the pay negotiations :ugh: as per the thread title, people?

barron: will he cost-save down to a V8 vantage? :}

£35M in savings from NERL. That equates to about 269 ATCOs salary/AAVA/pension payments to save it over one year. Just from NERL, mmm, interesting.

I'm sure much of that saving can be made by NOT moving TC to swanwick, Heathrow new Tower, New NSL HQ (Heathrow House) and all the other extra costs NATS have had to stump up in this finacial year!

Can anyone type what the chief cock has said cos I can't access my emails from home for some reason?

There are some more than capable ATCOs willing to give up all their validations to go full time at the College and others looking for ROVI posts who would stay part valid at their unit. Why would they do it if the instructor role pay scales were reduced? There are loads of people on here who whinge that they don't get paid enough as, or to be, OJTIs, so why would expect College instructors to be paid less?

Because from the NSL side of things it is scandalous that they have been placed in the top Band and the reason being because there are NERL instructors in the same building.

My whinge is against NSL and the poor treatment of lower band units. I also may be wrong but believe NSL is no longer part of the ROVI process or new applications anyway.

I would not expect a Swanwick Atco to get a drop in pay to go to the college. But why should someone get a 20 grand payrise when they cannot validate at a band 2 unit and then go to the college? I believe they should be paid as an Atco3. Same as Thames Radar being paid Band 5 money like LHR approach just because they are in the same room.

If you kept your Heathrow or Gatwick validation whilst at the college you should be paid the rate at which your validation is held. Permanent college instructors (NSL) could be paid at a lower rate. If not get rid of the NSL college as I previously stated as we are not getting the students but paying for the service and outsource or poach from other airfields outside of NATS. This is going on anyway at all units because there is no output, or not enough, from Hurn.

the announcement
 

mr red
i stuck it into the nats section of pprune... didnt think it was right to post it here, its got some stuff that should only be kept in nats :ok:

Ok, cheers bud

As for payrise. We'll get a right royal screwing with the union/management line being as one as per usual. Dry powder?

I see the French are on strike in the next few days again. When will we learn?

But the saving is over CP2 which doesn't end until 2011.

BD

Ops Managers/STM's must be shi@@ing themselves!

Ok, £35m of savings should be dead easy.

I suggest they start a suggestion thread on the intranet where we can all make suggestions.

Office computers powered off at night and the weekend would be a good place to start.

How about travel expenses next, Video Conferencing?

Hotel expenses. No one put up at NATS expense.

Bonding weekends

Award ceremonies.

I'm liking this cost saving thing already :E

But allowing for the cost of actually making people redundant you probably need to make that number of people redundant now to make the actual saving over the remainder of CP2. In fact possibly more as the grades likely to go probably earn less than Standard Noise assumed.

Beads - as I said, that would be the equivalent saving in one year but you could divvy it up over the next three years eg get rid of 90 now and see the savings accrue over the coming years.

eglnyt - I was looking at an average of around £130k pa (wages, AAVAs/pension) rather than the saving of making 269 top of the scalers redundant.

Cost savings - cutting out 5* hotel lash ups for up to 200 peeps for 2 days. Sacking Div of Safety in it's entirety. Car allowances for highly paid managers (can't they afford their own?)

Hootin - but when you go to the college, be it full time or as a ROVI, you become an employee of NERL so why wouldn't you get paid the going rate. Anyhoo, when you start at the College, you go onto Band 5 but not right to the top, so you don't start off in the 90k bracket, it'll take a few years to get there, and ROVIs only get a two year contract initially so it's not as if they're joining the Porsche club while they're there. They also have no guarantee of getting a place back at their Band 2 unit after the contract is up so they may have to go where the jobs are which invariably means a Band 5 unit.

Thanks StandardNoise, I appreciate you, like me, have a pretty good picture of life at CATC. But just to lift a quote for a sec, if I may.

"...Why would they do it..." - - good point - why would "they" give up their validations to do an interesting & rewarding job, which relies on them passing on their years of ATC experience to the ATCOs of the future. Why would they give up a month a year for the dubious benefit of "normal hours"? Why would they endure a regime of constant change & constant assessment, no different to where they came from, but with little opportunity to actually practice their hard earned skills? Why would they work for the one company in the business that sees training as a costly waste of time, when the rest of the world sees it as a benefit?

I guess it must be the support of all those they left behind in the operational world...those who remember every ex Trainee since the dawn of time who upset them, but forget all those they work well with every day. Who remember the one guy who (15 years ago) struggled from unit to unit when he was stitched up by the ATCO2/3 shenanigans, who never claimed to be the best ATCO in the world, but forget all those others that worked at Heathrow, Gatwick, TC, Manchester, Birmingham & all across the world etc for many years, without incident. Who turn every opportunity to slag off the folks at Hurn, without ever taking the time (as I believe SN has) to find out exactly what does go on down there. Those who seem to think they got valid all on their own, with no assistance from anyone else enroute. Those who'll shout on an internet forum, but wouldn't put their own backsides in the firing line & say it to an Instructors face. Those who think Aerodrome still uses a light board, & Approach just uses strips...

Yep, that must be it...:ugh: - it sure ain't the money - the hassle & "support" wouldn't make it anywhere near worthwhile for me. Or maybe they just don't waste their time with trolls on the internet:hmm:

Mr. Jones,

Where do you draw the line on that?

So when I go to Amsterdam at the end of March for three days to visit NLR then I should pay the travel and hotel bill myself?

Maybe a few months ago when some of us went to Belgium to visit Barco to look at the current sim technology then we should have paid out of our own pocket?

Or next time I'm at CTC doing ATCO interviews then I should forgo the free lunch and insist I pay myself?

I think Gonzo that the point is "is the journey really neccessary?"

Meetings about meetings ......excellence awards......there is scope for savings.

As long as it doesn't affect our watch coming over to see you for an educational TRUCE visit, eastern. Video conferenced p!ss ups just aren't the same.:}

Standard Noise

We have been told up north that NSL has ditched the ROVI system so mute point from an NSL background. So leaving the college after 2 years there may be no room at band 1/2/3 units. What world do you live in?

How about going back to a band 1/2/3 unit to release desperate people who can't move on or up because we have no one coming in, especially from the college.

I say again, from an NSL point of view, the college is an overhead that does not seem to be worth the money. It's totally different for NERL.

If it is worth the money then why are we again trawling for previous failed trainees and non-nats controllers? Where are our students?

I very much doubt that ATCO's have a a lot to worry about with regards redundancy. Its the ATSA's and ATCE's that have to be worried at the moment, so when ATCO's worry about pay rises or paying for a meal in Amsterdam , spare a thought for your oppo's in the ops room who will be the ones in the firing line.