Easy Jet : Safety Culture : Using sickness absence to select for redundancy
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when faced with difficult decisions around redundancies, using sick record is one measure i agree with. Not nice for the person on the other end for sure, but it makes the most business sense.
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No, that is a poor approach to the problem. Either a pilots' level of attendance is acceptable or it isn't. If you have a problem you deal with the problem, not use it as a metric for firing. A pilot may have had a car accident and been off for an extended period due to very strict medical regulations(the office worker will still be able to work).
TBH I don't see a problem with LIFO. It is the most impartial way of making people redundant. The moment you move to any form of "metric", you are effectively using performance and you are effectively "booting out the rubbish". You are unnecessarily tainting those being made redundant......let's face it if you were employing would you rather employ someone fired impartially through LIFO, or someone who has been fired for performance?
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From experience there are two views from the flight deck; if you’re never sick (or happy to operate when you shouldn’t), sickness is a perfectly fine tool for the selection process. If on the other hand you do take the obligations of your licence seriously (or like to swing the lead) it’s a concern.
Would be interesting to see what the feeling was if it was based on extra fuel carried tables, which also makes business sense.
Neither stand up that well to the bigger safety picture.
Would be interesting to see what the feeling was if it was based on extra fuel carried tables, which also makes business sense.
Neither stand up that well to the bigger safety picture.
Excessive sickness is a very tricky problem.
We all know that some employees take the p*ss regarding sickness. Getting drunk the night before, Christmas, bank holidays, Sundays, child care issues, a Cup Final match, wanting to avoid a certain Captain, or SIM or TRE. We can probably all think of someone who has done this.
Any HR department worth their salt would have stats of the normal rates of sickness in the working population - probably specifically within aircrews, maybe even within fleets - and so be able to flag-up possible cases of dishonest sickness.
Mrs Uplinker tells me that when she was with a UK flag carrier; she heard of cabin crew who claimed pregnancy and faked their pregnancy tests.
On the other hand, some people are just unlucky with their health. Some companies have a return from sickness interview to make sure the returning employee is OK, and in the case of repeat "offenders"; whether there are any lifestyle changes that might be beneficial to their health. e.g. sleeping, diet, exercise, vitamins etc.
We all know that some employees take the p*ss regarding sickness. Getting drunk the night before, Christmas, bank holidays, Sundays, child care issues, a Cup Final match, wanting to avoid a certain Captain, or SIM or TRE. We can probably all think of someone who has done this.
Any HR department worth their salt would have stats of the normal rates of sickness in the working population - probably specifically within aircrews, maybe even within fleets - and so be able to flag-up possible cases of dishonest sickness.
Mrs Uplinker tells me that when she was with a UK flag carrier; she heard of cabin crew who claimed pregnancy and faked their pregnancy tests.
On the other hand, some people are just unlucky with their health. Some companies have a return from sickness interview to make sure the returning employee is OK, and in the case of repeat "offenders"; whether there are any lifestyle changes that might be beneficial to their health. e.g. sleeping, diet, exercise, vitamins etc.
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Kennytheking
TBH I don't see a problem with LIFO. It is the most impartial way of making people redundant. The moment you move to any form of "metric", you are effectively using performance and you are effectively "booting out the rubbish". You are unnecessarily tainting those being made redundant......let's face it if you were employing would you rather employ someone fired impartially through LIFO, or someone who has been fired for performance?
I, for one, think you SHOULD use performance. Indeed I think it is the primary criteria. The "rubbish" should be exactly the ones to go. The airline business is just like any other business, it is there to perform a function/product that it can sell to others. The more successful it is the more it grows and the more people it employs. LIFO is a crude method of selection and a relic of the trade unions in the old nationalised industries - and didn't they do well
TBH I don't see a problem with LIFO. It is the most impartial way of making people redundant. The moment you move to any form of "metric", you are effectively using performance and you are effectively "booting out the rubbish". You are unnecessarily tainting those being made redundant......let's face it if you were employing would you rather employ someone fired impartially through LIFO, or someone who has been fired for performance?
I, for one, think you SHOULD use performance. Indeed I think it is the primary criteria. The "rubbish" should be exactly the ones to go. The airline business is just like any other business, it is there to perform a function/product that it can sell to others. The more successful it is the more it grows and the more people it employs. LIFO is a crude method of selection and a relic of the trade unions in the old nationalised industries - and didn't they do well
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the longer serving employees helped the business to make its money, the war chest it’s currently perched on. Someone in the door a few months didn’t. Use disciplinary etc that’s on record but length of service should be used for employees that have not crossed the line. If you’re genuinely sick or fatigued then you have a legal and contractual duty not to report, when you take out performance and conduct issues that are on record only a very small amount will have been selected. LIFO ends up being a deciding factor when all is equal.
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So you would be happy to fly on an aircraft with your Mum, Dad and children knowing that the Captain has sinusitis but is too scared to call in sick for fear of redundancy, and when an explosive decompression occurs at 39,000ft he immediately becomes incapacitated. Your families lives are now in the hands of a young first officer (we were all there once), operating as single crew, to get you to a safe level where you can breathe. Let’s just hope he too doesn’t have the same ailment, otherwise you’re all proper fuc£ked. What a ridiculously silly thing to say.
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Now, I look at it from a different perspective Zoso. Should a pilot who suffers regular bouts of sinusitis, which arguably could incapacitate him/her in the event of a decompression, be flying passengers in a pressurised commercial airliner at all?
Just anecdotally, my AME said last year when discussing my renewal that he saw sinusitis most commonly in pilots who were fatigued and overworked. I had a bout at the end of a very long month including reserve and a large number of minimum rest trips and needed two weeks off before I was safe to fly. I was told it was a decent proxy for fatigue at the right time of year.
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I give up!
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Playing devil's advocate, I think Balpa will have a hard time arguing against the use of absence, and here's why.
It is not only perfectly legal but a recommended way for a company to differentiate between its staff. The fact that pilots are proscribed from going to work when unfit is irrelevant because the same rule applies to everyone, it's a level playing field. All easyJet is doing is differentiating.
I absolutely agree that there are potential safety implications but I think that will be argued to be a separate issue and doesn't impinge on employment law in the here and now. It remains that professional pilots are obliged to observe the ANO.
Like I said, just playing devil's advocate. I think a poster above made a good point. The 15% of trainers are probably safe and the 5% with conduct issues (a realistic percentage in any industry) are probably not so that leaves the remaining 80% of pilots to make up the other 20% of redundancies.
My guess is that an element of LIFO will be added so it's not solely down to attendance. Fingers crossed there will be ways found to mitigate the headcount reduction.
It is not only perfectly legal but a recommended way for a company to differentiate between its staff. The fact that pilots are proscribed from going to work when unfit is irrelevant because the same rule applies to everyone, it's a level playing field. All easyJet is doing is differentiating.
I absolutely agree that there are potential safety implications but I think that will be argued to be a separate issue and doesn't impinge on employment law in the here and now. It remains that professional pilots are obliged to observe the ANO.
Like I said, just playing devil's advocate. I think a poster above made a good point. The 15% of trainers are probably safe and the 5% with conduct issues (a realistic percentage in any industry) are probably not so that leaves the remaining 80% of pilots to make up the other 20% of redundancies.
My guess is that an element of LIFO will be added so it's not solely down to attendance. Fingers crossed there will be ways found to mitigate the headcount reduction.
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The only issue with your ideas Tick Tock Man is that it’s not a level playing field. When you have a young family and the germ hibernators are in their early years you catch everything going. Pilot’s with young children generally have higher sickness than the folk with no children. Where is the level playing field?
If it has got to the stage that HR have identified pattern sickness (weekends off etc) and you have been warned about it by all means include it in a matrix just as you would disciplinaries.
If it has got to the stage that HR have identified pattern sickness (weekends off etc) and you have been warned about it by all means include it in a matrix just as you would disciplinaries.
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The only issue with your ideas Tick Tock Man is that it’s not a level playing field. When you have a young family and the germ hibernators are in their early years you catch everything going. Pilot’s with young children generally have higher sickness than the folk with no children. Where is the level playing field?
Some people are going to be off sick more than others through no fault of their own and they'll get thrown out with the chancers. It's tough luck but it's legal. I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying that is why Balpa will not force easyJet to remove the sickness criteria if they don't want to.
Last edited by Tick Tock Man; 12th Jul 2020 at 22:03. Reason: Amended for clarity.
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The biggest problem with the proposed matrix is that it penalises those that have been employed for the duration of the calculation period (April 18 to March 20). Someone who joined the company in Jan 20 is very unlikely to have accumulated many SICK/UNFT days.
as another poster has said, it seems very unlikely that sickness will be removed from the matrix but I think it highly likely that length of service will be added.
as another poster has said, it seems very unlikely that sickness will be removed from the matrix but I think it highly likely that length of service will be added.
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I believe it's calculated by dividing the number of absences by the number of days available for work, not the absolute number of absences. Those with less than two years' service will have their absences divided by fewer working days, so the resulting percentage is both fair and comparable, regardless of time served.
