Easyjet Scrap 6/3 pattern
 

Easyjet have just scrapped their 6/3 pattern for cabin crew. The nightmare of incompetent random rostering is upon you. Good luck with your applications elsewhere. Shameful behaviour from a company that consistently bites the hand that feeds :D

There is already an extensive discussion on this in the 'easyJet PpRuNe PRIVATE forum'. All cabin crew who are not a member of this forum join it now by clicking here

Could take up to 12 months to come into force. The 6/3 pattern is not enjoyed by all Cabin Crew. I will prefer the random rostering pattern as that is what I have been used to for most of my career. I understand that some people plan ahead if they already know days off for months to come, but it is personal preference. I feel it is a positive move forward for job security. I am sure there will be plenty more changes to come.

Ladies and Gentlemen, have you ever done random rostering within easyJet?

I did it for 6 months when I first joined and it was awful. You would work up to 7 days on, then at times just 1 day off and then back in on a block of 6 days. Duty days were random in that some weeks you would do all lates, other weeks mainly earlies - sometimes even start on lates and end on earlies. It was impossible to plan for things and more often than not you would be on minimum rest between duty periods. I was going home from work absolutely hanging at night.

If the company can not manage 6 and 3, they certainly won't be able to manage random rostering. Crew will run out of hours early in the year and will spend a lot of time on HCT and other crew will end up picking up the slack.

What the company needs to do is invest a bit more time and money in the rostering department, analyse exactly how many crew are needed per group and get the right numbers in the groups. Why on earth are we constantly at LGW (and other bases LPL for instance) having crew who are doing week after week of late duties? The company abuses 6 and 3 by allocating duties in the wrong way, then they say it does not work!

Random rostering will be a complete and utter disaster, but management won't care because we are just a resource to be used up and discarded (like a BCF!).

then you havn't experienced random rostering 'easyjet style'. Bugger all to do with job security too. Merely an easy fix for an underperforming rostering department..welcome to the wonderful world of single days off and 8 days off a month. Why do you think most pilots would walk if it happened to them?

As I said earlier its personal preference. Some people will be happy with the random rostering and some wont. I have experienced random rostering at various companies and still prefer it. I dont expect Easyjet do it any different to other companies. 7 days on, single days off is normal for companies to roster on a random roster.

And the vast majority of crew joined this company knowing that it had a fixed pattern roster, something which was the envy of a lot of airlines.

I love the fact that I have 3 days off at the end of a block of days on. I have things to do outside of work. There is a saying "Work to live, not live to work" and unfortunately easyJet management think it's "Live to work, not work to live"

If we scrap 6 and 3 then I can see an awful lot of cabin crew resigning, hell working in Tesco would be better - at least I would get cheap shopping! :}

If I read this I'm more than happy to leave this company where care and conenience is only another try to crew the screw over!..:=

Is not only that I'm DTM crew...EasyJet is getting worse and worse..no happy place to stay and work.

Sally, I think there will be a lot of UK crew leaving soon once this takes effect.

"Low Cost with care and convenience" my arse - where is the care of the crew and convenience for the crew?

And where do these changes fit in with our 5 pillars? It's all crap! :*

It's an absolute joke. As GOOMG says, get ready for 7 day weeks, lates to earlies (which many of the 320/1 crew are being subjected to on a regular basis). I can't remember who said it but it's true: flexible means flexible for easyJet, not flexible for you.

Where has my quality of life gone? Down the drain. The way I work is more restricted, I'm not allowed to have as much fun, I'm treated like a child and management seem to do what suits them. You call in sick? Oh no no, you should have waited until the morning too see how you were feeling - don't you know how much sickness costs us? On the other hand, come in to work and get offloaded - well then you should have called in sick?

Go in for a return to work chat and they want to know the intimate details. What exactly was wrong, what did you take for it, perhaps you should take vitamin supplements. It appears our modest ACCMs are moonlighting as doctors.

The problem is that the company thinks they can walk all over us. I appreciate the pinch from the price of oil, but alienate your cabin crew and you're in a tough situation. Expect to see many, many people leaving. Heck, it's just like any other airline now with random rostering, what's keeping people here? Heck, even Ryanair can make fixed 6-3/5-3 (depending on base) work.

Everyone, no matter what your view, needs to make it know to the union. If you're not a member, join - make us stronger as a workforce and show them we will not be trodden on.

For what it's worth, the company I work for is bringing in 'variable' roster for all new starts and hoping to phase out 6/3.
Now, I work in crewing/ops and the 'variable' roster makes our jobs a damned sight easier. Not much use you guys hearing that, but, from a management perspective (and I'm not management) I can see why it's being done.
I believe that Easy use the same rostering system that we do. Good luck !

Crew are a resource, horrible I know to use that term when a person is on the end of a roster, but 6/3 patterns are very wasteful in terms of daily crew workload. On the positive side if Easyjet will provide some sort of trip, day off request system, then "random rostering" is a step forward. Like most other airlines on this planet use.

Trust me, when I'm having to do both Ops and crewing as well as having to organise taxis/hotac flight plans etc etc, whilst only have three of us in the office to deal with 20+ a/c, ANYTHING that makes my job easier is welcome !
Obviously, Easy have seperate Ops/crewing depts so I can't comment on their working practices.
I know our crew have nothing like the roster disruption that you may have, BUT, the main reason for disruption is sickness. Tell you what, cut out the sickness and you halve the disruption. Easy really :ugh:

Tell you what sort out the rosters to be a bit less tiring and the sickness will reduce!! Everyone is happy! :)

P.S not aimed at you as you don't work at EZY!

I know you will probably hate me for this but having worked in crewing/ops before, i doubt any crewing officer works on the basis "oh they've done a hard shift before lets not put them on that trip", if its legal then do it.

When you work in ops/crewing, you have to manage crew levels on a day to day basis and you have to be company minded because if you delay the aircraft because you haven't got the correct cover, it will be crewing that have to answer to the managers and explain why and what alternatives did you seek.

Airlines are business's and will do whatever they have to do to make things work. Crew is not an easylife, i've done it myself and it is hard but when you work low cost, it is prob one of the most physically demanding rosters you will ever have but unfortunately you can't have surplus crew just sitting about.

I think by doing what they are doing or intend to do will soon see the weaker crew leave. if you want plenty of days off and an adequate social life then find an airline that offers that. Easy is low cost meaning low fares and therefore you have to budget with that. Low costs means stretching everything to its maximum as possible to keep your costs low.

I always thought the fixed rostering pattern is what keeps people at Easyjet!

In my previous life (Not Easyjet) I was in Ops Control / Crewing and also did a stint rostering.

Yes drag and dropping does happen but sometimes it is the only way to get the rosters out on time. There isn't time to look at crews as individuals unfortunatly.

Computers do do rosters, but you always need human intervention, there is training to consider, sickness. Even when you have run the roster with the computer someone comes up and says someone has gone long term sick, or needs additional training. So this not only affects the individual roster but often 10 more people as things are moved around to cover the duties. You won't get rid of rostering officers unfortunatly!!

It would have been nice to be able to be bit more personal but this is the real world!

A LOT of crew will leave if the roster pattern changes. Many many people have said that is why they stay at easyjet, crew and flightdeck.

I have only been at EasyJet for a year but even in just 12 months it has deteriorated completely... I hear 'rumours' about how fun it was just a couple of years ago.

The 6/3 pattern loss will not be a long term fix for easyjets problem. The problem is mis-management of crew and duties. For example, sending gatwick crew to milan, sending stansted crew to gatwick to cover. Point?? They are wasting twice as much money as they would if they just sent stansted straight to Milan. If you look a little closer, there is so much money wasting going on, multiple taxis at the same time to the same place with one person in each taxi, taxi-ing people then cancelling the flight they are suposed to be working... the list is endless!

I understand that crewings job must be difficult sometimes, but these are simple things that could save a fortune!!!

Personally, most of the time I am happy at EasyJet but what with the threat of 6/3 disappearing, temporary staff working my flights (22 sectors in July, what is that all about!!), my unpaid leave request being denied... Yes I am searching elsewhere.

EasyJet will come to regret this very very soon... they could survive this oil price impact if they treated us better and listened to our ideas. After all, who knows what would work better? Those sitting in a room somewhere in Luton, or those that are actually out there working and having to follow these (stupid) rules and regulations?!!

Rant over :-)

Small base restructure
 

As I understood it from the e-mail, the company is seeking greater flexibility in the small bases, implying the 6-3 pattern could stay in the large bases. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it may just be something we in the regions need to worry about at this stage. A great shame - getting a fixed pattern was THE big achievement at easyJet, when it was introduced, and I would hate to lose it.:(

The way I read the email implied it would be for all crew. Regardless, it's yet another hit to our declining terms and conditions. It's happening slowly, but it's definitely happening. Restricted summer leave, temporary contracts for new entrants, and now this. It's a race to the bottom.

Even for pilots?

Cabin crew - pilots are on a different pattern and I understand consultations between the company and BALPA are currently taking place.

Wonder what sacrifices the management are making during this "difficult" time? I mean their terms and conditions won't have deteriorated that's for sure. Still getting their fixed pattern 9-5 shifts, lunch breaks, they have pre arranged their bonuses for this year, holidays without restrictions........

How many mangers doing the same/similar duty? Too many!

Get a few more crewing officers and watch, as its those guys who could make real savings for this company if they where better funded, understood, managed. All this could be achieved from the spare money we would have if we thinned out that self serving money grabbing management lot.

This company is a shadow of its self character wise. It takes very little notice of the lack of moral, direction, quality of employment that is so evident. What a shame. Its hell bent on making things worse.

In short we're over managed, stalling, panicking and making rash decisions like this based on nothing more than a mangers bonus book.

You reap what you sow management.

ex GB MAN crew were never going to go onto a 6/3 pattern anyway and to be honest, it doesn't bother me one bit. I am ex GB and I never worked seven days in a row and often it was hard to do swaps with people because i needed my two days off in a row. A floating roster isn't that bad at all provided they impliment a request day off/trip bidding system.

MancRy

We do have a request day off system, except it's an absolute nightmare to get your RDO's. You can only book one on a day that is available for booking as annual leave. You have to email a lady in LTN who will then put it on your roster, but that is where the system falls down. If the nice lady in LTN is on leave, off sick or something, then your RDO request will have to wait - meanwhile someone else could book the day off that you need as an annual leave day via AIMS.

And trip bidding, well don't hold your breathe - that would only lead to an improvement in quality of life, which will never happen as the management seem to be hell bent on making our lives as difficult as possible at the moment.

Random rostering in easyJet will be completely cocked up. Crewings favourite response of "It's legal" will be used all the time and crew will run out of hours way before the year is up.

Summer 2006 was a complete and utter nightmare where the management decided to reduce the headcount per aircraft, this lead to thousands (and I do mean thousands) of flights having to be cancelled or sub-chartered. Finnair (I think it was them) spent the whole of the summer at LGW operating the ATH and FAO flights on a 757 which must have cost easyJet an absolute fortune.

The company want to reduce costs and claim that they have a flat management structure - why the hell now do we have ACCM, CCM and RCCM - then LTN H89 management, the previous structure was OPM, BCCM then H89 management. So our flat management structure now has a new level of RCCM - at least 2 or 3 people who are being paid to overlook all the bases, that must be an unnecessary £100k per year being paid out, money that would be better off spent on recruiting around 4 or 5 more crewing officers.

I have absolutely no confidence in the management of easyJet anymore. It is only purely my respect for my flying colleagues and pax that is making me stay here now :sad:.

GetofMygalley - unfortunatlely I cannot even stay because of my love of flying, colleagues and pax - I am leaving and not because I want too. Ezy have made my personal transition from Gb hardwork and with the one thing I was looking forward too a fixed rosta going, after 8yrs I am hanging up my wings :sad: wonder how many will be doing the same :hmm:

Not that it is of cardinal importance, but I believe it was Air Finland and not Finnair that did the LGW ATH run in a 757 in the summer of 2006. Somehow, I recall a figure of 8 million pounds in total subcharter costs for that summer, but I am not entirely certain. If I wasn't so lazy, I would look it up :}

You are indeed correct 'ReallyAnnoyed', it was Air Finland (just looked on !!!!!!!!!!!!!! to confirm).

sarahc44pink I am very sorry to hear you are going to hang up your wings after 8 years. I used to recommend easyJet as an employer to friends, and several people I have recommended have joined the company over the last couple of years. I will never recommend easyJet again, not even to my worst enemy!

I have had lots of messages over the last week or so from people saying they are going to resign NOW or resign one the random rostering comes in. Those muppets in LTN really don't have a clue what they have done and they don't realise that this will destroy the last remaining bit of crew moral.

Still - it will be interesting to see what comes out of easyJet Pulse 2009 (If the company is still here! :})

Would be interesting to see what comes out of Pulse 2008 - company's sitting on the results at the moment.

Just visit a UK base and see what morale is like. Very few people here have any kind words for the company.

Justnightstopping
 

The spanish contracts are different to UK ones so not sure if things will be different for you guys anyway (I know the french contracts treat crew better)...

As said before the 6/3 is NOT the cause of losing cash, but they think they can fob us off with that excuse... they are going to regret this move as so many people are going to leave when it does come up and they are going to be in a worse position.

Life style is essential for good morale - the 6/3 pattern was something that made people stay at EZY rather than looking elsewhere due to having a balanced life style.

I have operated both and I cant believe anyone would prefer an unbalanced roster to a balanced one especially when they start throwing in Day '7' and 'one day off' scenario's.

Lets face it, how many companies outthere can get away without having to pay their staff shift pay (even worse, you work irregular shifts), double time for weekends or bank holidays. Then are able to save a large chunk of pay (called flight pay!) when their staff are off sick, on leave or on maternaty etc.

No requirement for lunch breaks, how many of you eat right next to a toilet every day? That 'land side' would be illegal. The list could go on and on.

All it will achieve is that motivated staff will walk (most of the GB lot are on hold with BA). There are other ways to save money, best way is to start at the top lead by example and then work your way down.

:E

Justnightstopping, MAD base is still fairly small compared to the UK bases. You do have good managers there (I personally think that 'CG' is a lovely lady and I always enjoyed chatting with her when she was based at LGW).

You might be working an average of just 8.5 days per month - myself, I am working on average 20 days per month. Most working weeks I average about 57 duty hours and am absolutely shattered. I sleep through most of rest day 1, sleep well into rest day 2 and then only feel human again on rest day 3.

Yet again this month, rostering took my 900 hours total to 880 hours. Crewing have since added more duties to my roster taking me to almost 890 hours. I still have SBY duties on my roster for this month, even with a total block hours in excess of 100!

The company makes out that safety is our number one priority - except it isn't. Getting a bum on a crew seat is all they care about. You will hear the response "It's legal!" more and more over the next few months when crewing call out crew to fly when they are fit to drop.

Some bases are well run, others are not. Some bases only care about anciliary revenue and the SPH - others realise there is more to the job than selling. The only time you ever seem to hear from the ACCM's at LGW is when they are once again posturising over how wonderful a base LGW is and that we must do better with our sales, or threatening crew with performance related issues. We have a monthly base newsletter at LGW, it might as well be called the "LGW Sales Newsletter" for the content contained in it. It never fills you in on what management are doing to resolve local issues (Catering, cleaning, care-bears) which are things crew would like to know about. Management seem to poo-poo you with excuses when you have problems (I have first hand experience of an extremely ineffective LGW manager who loves to talk the talk yet never walks the walk).

So what with:

• 7 days on, 1 day off going to be a regular occurence
• Management only caring about sell SELL SELL SELL.
• Crew going from the A319 fleet to the A320/21 subfleet and being shafted financially
• Restrictions on how many days annual leave you can have in the summer period

It really is no wonder people are pi$$ed off.

I salute your local management in MAD, perhaps they should teach the rest of the network and H89 how to really run the company.

Incidentally, you don't need an MBA to run a company. I personally think there are far too many graduates in positions of power who don't have a clue how to actually do things in the real world. What is needed is people from the bottom to be promoted up into positions of responsibility, where they can inform senior management of how things should be handled in the real world - but that would be far too sensible a decision......

Without naming names, would these be existing easy ACCMs or one of the two ex-GB ACCMs who magically skipped the ranks from main crew/assistant purser to ACCM?

I will pm you, depending on the answer given it narrows it down just a little too much.

And unlike management, I am fair in my treatment of people.

Hello again justnightstopping

We are still awaiting information from the union to be cascaded down to members. This is something that union members may not be aware of, but easyJet DO NOT ALLOW the union reps to use the easyJet email system for union business.

All union members should ensure that they keep the union fully informed with their personal contact details so that their reps can get things sent out to them in a timely manner.

One of the LGW reps did try to send an email out to members last week (using the personal email addresses he has collected) but unfortunately a large percentage of addresses came back as "undeliverable".

MAD is the first base in Spain and is technically run as a seperate airline to the UK owing to the fact it is on a local contract. You are probably being "managed" now in a way that the company used to manage crew in the UK about 5 or 6 years ago. Hopefully your management team will continue to treat you with respect.

One thing we must all do though is STICK TOGETHER on this. Together we are strong and have a voice that will be heard, if we don't stick together or petty arguements break out, then the management will have one using the old "Divide and conquer" technique.

Happy flying folks and remember sell that extra cup of coffee! :}

I only just caught up with this threat and unfortunately I have to second Getoutofmygalley in pretty much everything she/he stated. And I'm not based in London.

Somebody who you wouldn't expect it off was just stood down from a duty as fatigued last week at our base. After a week/month from hell, reporting for an Airport SBY, finding changes for another 4 sectors duty, the crew member couldn't face it anymore and dissolved into tears (something else you wouldn't expect of that poor person). The ACCM sent her home (which is at least something.). But I ask myself how it can get to that point? If that is legal then this should be looked into....it shouldn't be legal that people work themselves to/over their limits like that!!!

Safety?! I bet despite anything that crew member might say that she hadn't been safe to operate for days already. Probably without realizing herself. I wonder how the CAA (and easyjet) expects us to be safe after a 12 hour duty in the best of circumstances....not considering the building-up-effect of many of those duties in a row...

As for the 6/3 roster....if the Union won't do anything about it, I will. As Getoutofmygalley said, I will be one of many to leave.

But see, I believe that's exactly what the company wants. It's called constructive dismissal.

Get rid of all the old crew who are on decent contracts, and get more fixed term contracters in who won't dare to be off sick because they are worried that they are not taken on. They earn less money for the same job, get only very little leave and that little will be allocated whenever it suits the company not them. They are less likely to join the union as they are only on a fixed term contract. Basically, easyjet is turning into a second Ryanair.

I'm not surprised that we still haven't got any Pulse results although the company already got them. I bet they are horrendous results although I find it already speaks for itself to see the respond rates at the different bases. You can see there which bases are still motivated, and which are only putting their head down and come to work.

It's such a shame, and it makes me so sad and angry because it used to be a good place to work for....and it used to be fun. Now it's only a job, and not even a good one.

Dolley, you're quite right.

It seems easyJet's crew "vision" is:

1) School leavers are given 6 month contracts.
2) Some get kept on for winter. Others skip to stage 5.
3) Next summer, make them SCCMs.
4) Stay for a year.
5) Leave.

Permanent contract as it was (before the fixed term contracts came in) = bad. I'll bet you a four sector day that the company will introduce new contracts for those on FTCs who get kept on. Or indeed try to switch us all onto a new contract.

The other scenario is that they keep people on for the winter on another FTC.

Far enough down the line, I wouldn't be surprised to see Ryanair style agency contracts. No basic salary to pay, just hourly pay, fear of going sick as it may lower their chances of getting an "easyJet" contract. Pay for training, uniform, ID, car parking, no crew food.

I shouldn't really be giving them ideas.

Dolley I think you've hit the nail on the head there - the company want rid of 200+ crew, so make working conditions impossible for some and you loose the crew without having to pay redundancy etc. Very clever and very wrong :=

I believe a large number of the old school EZY crew are very high standard professionals who joined with a passion, worked their backsides off as a team, and are now getting more and more dis-illusioned by the day....

It will go quite some way to explain the mass exodus of ex GB crew (who were all shafted by the Gibraltarian Royal Family).....as much as the ex GB crew got bad press they experienced over-night what a large number of the older EZY CC are going through over a longer period of time.

Aviation as a whole has a lot to answer for in regards to double standards and unfortunately as always we know what needs to happen before anything will ever change.......

Hello again everyone

I hope you have all had a good day flying, remember to sell, sell, sell. Also, please remember the fantastic new items that can be found inside the July/August edition of the easyShop Brochure. What with the school holidays being just a couple of weeks away this is a fantastic time for us to increase SPH and earn lot's of commision for ourselves......

ARRGGGHHHH!

Sorry about that, I was just briefly converted to the orange side. Now back in the real world ;)

TM if you are reading this, get your arse on an aircraft, operate as a standard crew member (Number 2, 3 or 4 - most certainly not number 1 and you can not cop out by being a SNY) for a month on minimum rest doing 6x4 sectors in a week and see how much you like it. Then send out an grovelling email to crew beging for our forgiveness.

And TM if you end up on my aircraft at some point, don't be surprised if we encounter some turbulence during the service when I am near you. You can expect to wear the contents of the ice bucket and gash bag!

I spoke to a union rep at LGW today regarding the 6 and 3 pattern. She assures me that the company can not just go ahead and implement this without crew consultation. It appears that TM might have overstepped the mark with her email and managed to piss off half the flying community.

So, can everyone here please make a point of mentioning to their colleagues that this is not a cut and dry deal. The company can not put a significant change through like this without our 'approval'. Please encourage your colleagues to join the union. If you don't like the idea of paying the union your subs month in month out, you should at least join until this is sorted. The more members we have, the more chance we have of stopping this happening.

Also, remember we all love to bitch and moan, but you have to bitch and moan at the right people. Bitch to your union reps, let them have your feedback so that they can put together a good case for fighting this.

If we work together we can get this changed, if we just bitch to ourselves, nothing will change for the better!

(Incidently, my opening on here was a typical sort of LGW ACCM type email - the other types would be moaning and threatening 'performance issues......')