Money well spent.
 

Take a look at the HKAOA financial statements released last week:

HKD10.5mil received from members in subscriptions and entrance fees.

General Secretary expenses were HKD2.114 million!!

So 20% of the money pilots paid to the AOA last year went
to General Secretary expenses. That's outrageous. Looks to me
like Findlay gets more than the B scale Captains in this Company.

Please forward on - this needs to be raised at the AGM.

So this email has been making the rounds. so who will present this at the AGM?

IMHO, the money can be spend else where, maybe on Lawyers to stop freighter contract abuse.

Comments?:ok:

A lot of questions are being asked about this.

What does the General Secretary possibly do to justify this?

Anyone?

Harbour Dweller and Mr Blogs,

Given that this info is being circulated by email, it is entirely possible that neither of you are members.


In that case, I can only assume that you are stirring...
If, however, I am wrong, then why don't you simply trot down to the office and have a look at the breakdown of those expenses?


Apathy is one thing, but sitting in front of your computer asking someone else to do this ON YOUR BEHALF is supreme laziness....
:=

jed_thrust well said!

As an association all expenditures are completely transparent and available to all members.

Apart from the fact that I object to getting anonymous "spam" emails from someone purporting to be my colleague, I find that the information in it is deliberately misrepresented to such an extent that it is a deliberate lie.
Please go and check for yourselves, apart from clearing your mind on this it will give an idea of the sort of people actively working against the AOA.:confused:

Who knows your private e-mail address????
 

I think you will find that those in the CPU that stole the AOA members list and private e-mail addresses about three years ago and continually bombard both my private and GroupWise e-mail addresses with crap are behind this e-mail that has now been received by most members of the AOA???? It is also public knowledge that a former AOA president who was a founding member of the CPU is on public record as referring to JF as that f*****g p***k.

General Secretary Expenses =/= one person

Expenses =/= someone's salary.

The expense to any firm or organisation of a staff is much higher than the salary. Pensions, insurances, payroll taxes, allowances (in HK, these can be significant)

Lies, damned lies and statistics.
 

I have also received these unsolicited emails. I have also received the one saying that CX was prepared to offer so much more but due to the ineptitude of the negotiators only a token amount was offered! If only that were true - you can waste your time finding out how much better paid other airline pilots are and save me the time and effort next time!

Now, onto the AOA staff. I am not willing or able to disclose too much due to data privacy. Lets just say that the package our gen sec is on is equivalent to a SFO.

The AOA's biggest expense is LOI insurance. If we gave up on insuring our members we could get subs reduced from 1.25% to about 0.8%. If we could get the staff to work for free then we could reduce subs from 1.25% to about 0.9%. Is 1.25% that onerous?

Our staff are competitively remunerated. Given the itinerant composition of AOA GCs over time, it is imperative that the AOA 'corporate memory' is sustained by retaining our staff over time. Our staff costs equate to about 35% of total expenses. Total staff costs at CX equate to 19% - but then they have fuel, leasing, route operating costs etc whereas we don't.

If you want a video club we can get rid of our staff and have calls diverted to an indian call centre. If you want a professional AOA that is constantly fighting rearguard actions protecting our rights, then you have to pay for it. Our gensec has been here longer than I have - more importantly he has been involved with all negotiations over that time. And unlike the 19 of us that volunteer our time, he is always available to give you advice on a range of issues.

I suspect these emails are sourced from CPU members who have had run ins with the GenSec. The GenSec and I often disagree but we respect each other's opinions. We both always have the general memberships interest's at heart.

I find this spam email campaign cowardly and mischievous. If you have a viable or practical alternative then offer it. If not, concentrate on getting CPU membership up from your 10 or so to at least triple digits. Then maybe you can send the emails to your own members for a change!

As NC has said, JF is on the same gross salary as a first year “B” scale SFO including base salary, housing and provident fund. To put an exact figure on Pprune isn’t kosher but for those in doubt his package comes within HKD$107.60 per year of a year one “B” scale SFO. Still don’t believe us? The figures are freely available on the HKAOA web sight under “Financial Statements 21Jun07[1]”.

I think this scurrilous spam e-mail has thoroughly been blown out of the water for what it is. A dishonest lie. Those that do bring it up at the AGM will be exposing themselves as someone that doesn’t do their homework properly.

Number Re-Crunch
 

Re-crunching:

Total Gen Sec Expenses = HKD2,114,793
Total AOA Income = HKD10,751,979

(Percentage = 20%)

Gen Sec Salary: HKD1,349,382
Senior B Scale Captain Year 6: HKD1,337,400

Titan - excuse my ignorance but where is the "dishonest lie"?

tfa456
 

B scale CN in HKG on year 1.
$98K a month in salary
$5K a month in HDP
$15K a month in PF
$98+15K for 13th month
$0-$200K a year for Education
Free medical
$48-80K a month in housing depending on whether he buys or rents.
That adds up to $2.07-$2.49million not counting education or medical.

The Gensec had his salary and housing combined in a package several years ago. Since that time our housing allowances have increased over 20-30% whilst his salary/housing package has not.

If you have an issue please get your numbers straight, then argue it logically. And please take me off your spam email list - I already know I am an incompetent negotiator - I have an ex wife who tells me all the time - so lets just assume I accept that without my presence at negotiations the pilots would have been awarded at least 50% payrises!

tfa456

As you have elected to bring out into a public forum confidential information only available to AOA members, I will give you a lesson in mathematics as you seem challenged in that department. Before we start though there are a few rules that must be obeyed:

Rule 1: Only compare apples with apples.
Rule 2: Always follow rule 1.

General Secretary’s personal income

$1,349,382.00 + (Base Salary & Housing Allowance)
$194,902.00 (Provident Fund Contributions)
$1,544,284.00 (Total)


Year 1 “B” scale SFO’s personal income

$838,248.00 + (Base Salary)
$576,000.00 + (Housing)
$129,928.40 (Provident Fund Contributions)
$1,544,176.40 (Total)

Difference between GC & Y1 “B” scale SFO

$1,544,284.00 – (GC)
$1,544,176.40 (SFO)
$107.60 (Difference)

tfa456,

Would you mind sending £500,000 to my Nigerian bank account.

You seem to believe others without bothering to check your facts. Why others have the patience to spoonfeed those too lazy to check for themselves is beyond me.:mad:

F*** me!!!

More importantly..................as we always trot out...........

"pay peanuts.............you get monkeys"


do you really want a chimp negotiating your COS ???

Apples with apples.

General Secretary Prov Fund contribution: HKD194,902
B scale Senior Captain Year 6 Prov Fund contribution: HKD207297

Housing, education, travel etc. Cannot compare an apple with an apple if that apple is not in the contract.

Better still:

What does the General Secretary of BALPA get paid?

To disagree with the Committee types in this forum is apparently to morph into a cowardly, scurrilous, spamming, CPUing, dishonest lier. Unfortunately that justs reflects poorly on the calibre of some of those Committee types.

Why not encourage the debate amongst the membership, after all we pay the bills and not all agree we're getting value for money.

do you really want a chimp negotiating your COS ???

Eerr don't we already have that?

7FF

If that’s the case have you put your hand up to be a negotiator? It really pisses me off to see these so called armchair experts criticise those that volunteer their time as committee members but won’t put up their hand and volunteer themselves.:yuk:

In my mind you can't have a negotiator who's main job is a pilot! His secondary job is a negotiator? Please

Do you see actors, lawyers, sportsman and other high paid professionals negotiating their contracts? NO!!!!! They have specialist people doing it for them.

This is my biggest problem with aviation unions, they all think that if they do a 3 day industrial relations course then that makes them negotiators.

Get professional people in to front the talks with the company. These people won't get sidetracked by petty issues, they deal with the all the issues. After all they do this day in and day out in many different fields. We work as pilots first, everything else second. We can't give 100% to negotiations, they can.

Secondly get a good PR firm to represent us!!! They have ways and means of delivering the story to the public, especially the local chinese public who tend to think that we are all paid $5 millions dollars (According to Tony T.) We need to educate the public on how things really are at Cathay.

In this time period where anything to do with aviation is in decline, now is the time to get a better package and work conditions, not a worse one. From pilots, engineers, anyone really.

The Godfather

I tend to agree. The only problem is that CX management refuse to negotiate with professional negotiators from the AOA. That is why we have pilots who have only done a three day negotiation course negotiating with the company.