Stiglet, I would hope that companies work as a result of cooperation between employee's and shareholders, collective bargaining allows a fair balance to be found between profitability and remuneration; provided that it is done responsibly.

As I acknowledged in my first post, I know nothing about Easyjet or the closure of the base in Madrid. I made an assumption which may well have been wrong.

I do however believe that Pilots generally are excessively reasonable with Managements who stop at nothing to push terms and conditions down "in the race to the bottom". When a group of Pilots reach the point where they really feel they need to take industrial action, then in all probability it is because nothing else has worked.

You are correct- "whether any contract is good or bad is subjective" therefore as a colleague of the Lisbon Pilots you should accept their point of view and acknowledge their right to strike without the intention to interfere with that strike.

By the way your view of secondary action is skewed, if the Lisbon Pilots travelled to England to prevent you from flying out of London then that would be secondary action. In fact, what you and your English colleagues are planning to do is to travel to Lisbon and fly the Aircraft normally flown by the Lisbon based guys..... if you refused to do it, that would not be secondary action in the same way that one person working in one factory would not be carrying out secondary action if he refused to travel to a striking factory to operate the equipment of the striking factory.

I do believe that travelling to Lisbon to operate the aircraft that your striking colleagues normally operate is beneath contempt.

I'm certain BALPA will have a view on the situation.

However, has anyone checked to see what the legal stance is when considering the following:

LIS based pilots are, presumably, on contracts that are water tight under Portuguese law and English EasyJet pilots are, presumably, on water tight UK contracts.

Would a UK based pilot be taking secondary action if asked to break a Portuguese contract based strike?

I'm certain that easyJet contracts will contain a stipulation that the company "reserves the right to make a pilot work at other network bases" (or such).

However, whether or not they can compel you to break a strike, in a foreign land, may be a point worth asking before accepting or declining such a Christmas morning offer.

kungfu panda - I do accept they have a view and I do acknowledge their right to choose to strike if they wish. Where we differ is on what action I, or other easyJet pilots not based in LIS and not on LIS contracts, can and cannot take. You obviously feel we have a duty to support our colleagues in LIS. That may be so, however legally we cannot. I'm sure the company will be considering their legal position before rostering us to fly.

As for travelling to LIS to operate the flights; it is my earnest wish that it does not come to that. I have no desire to be involved in a dispute between my company and a group of pilots from another base on another contract. To say that to operate the aircraft would be 'beneath contempt' is unfair as not to do so could render me in breach of my contract and therefore vulnerable to dismissal. Who would you expect to support me, the LIS pilots? I think not.

What is the view of BALPA and the company Reps with regard to its members being asked to fly the aircraft normally operated by the lisbon based Pilots?

easyJet Lisbon pilots announcing 5 days of strike
 

If you were an easyjet pilot and a member you would have received a newsletter a few days ago from the CC.

Gorter thanks for your sarcasm but this is a public thread. I was asking generally what the view of BALPA is with the regard to the strike in Lisbon, I am not asking for any confidential information.

A number of pilots took contracts at Lisbon to jump the Command queue leaving guys who would not settle for inferior contracts in the right hand seat . Now they've got what they wanted , they're claiming unfair treatment by the company !

If you're willing to sell your soul , you have to live with the consequences ........

That is not what happens.

UK pilots have to take empty UK based aircraft and operate them in Lisbon. If they are contractually obliged to do so and they refuse, they can be dismissed. Meanwhile the striking pilots are protected by their local laws.

There is more to this, of course, but that has been communicated to the UK pilots directly by BALPA.

OK, so I understand the Captains in Lisbon accepted a lower cost command, and now they are striking to bring their contract back to the company standard. The Pilots in the UK are saying "well you accepted the command with the lower remuneration therefore you should live by the sword and die by the sword".

Wonderful! now the company has achieved exactly what it wants, it has successfully "divided and conquered", that now opens the door to more and more out of seniority, lower cost bases.

I genuinely think that breaking your colleagues and friends strike in Lisbon will seriously backfire on all of you, you will all relinquish the only real power of collective bargaining which you have, Fools!!

So, if i understand this argument correctly, some legal strikers(protected by law)/strike supporters are suggesting that some non-strikers (not protected by law) should put themselves in a position of refusing a legitimate instruction (in law) by the company, which has the sanction of dismissal (in law). At some stage the strike ends with victory or otherwise. Some pilots (protected by law) go back to work, while the non-strikers don't go back to work, because they have been legally sacked. Seems like a reasonable request to the non-strikers from the strikers (not) ?

As I have said previously, any Pilot who travels from the UK to operate aircraft out of Lisbon which are normally operated by Lisbon based Pilots in a direct effort to break the strike of their colleagues should be considered as Beneath contempt.

It is clear that there is no such thing as CRM or teamwork in Easy...

You don't get it do you Kung Fu, no one wants to go from the UK, but if they refuse the company order to go, they will be fired simples. The UK union cannot intervene as secondary industrial action is illegal under UK law.

kung fu panda wrote: Kung fu - thought I'd copy this because when you read it and realise what a complete prat you are, you'll want to delete this most ill-informed post!

Refusal to accept reality/ failure to react to changing parameters/mindset . . . . call it what you will, but it has been a factor I believe in several approach phase accidents in recent years, not to mention AF over the pond.

If I believe hard enough all is well it will be, I don't have to react to changed circumstances & the fact it isn't well.

kungfu panda , I hope the stubborn refusal to accept reality you display here, is not a trait you take with you when you go to work. :=

Good afternoon Captplay......

I will not change mindset but maybe a change of tone is required.

My view is that in the UK during the 60's and 70's the Unions had too much power, they had control of the Labour party and almost bankrupted the country. Only an IMF bailout prevented that from happening. The Thatcher government stood up to the Unions and defeated them, they changed Laws crippling their power. This was attempt re-dress the balance that had gone to an extreme. Unfortunately in an effort to re-dress the balance we have now gone to the other extreme where employees in the UK have very little power to collectively bargain.

Unfortunately unscrupulous Managements are using this extreme of power which they have obtained in the UK (and Ireland) to dictate terms to employees throughout the EU. This has to be considered unacceptable and the full support of all Pilots should go to those prepared to stand up to these people. Currently those Pilots are the Easyjet Lisbon based crews.

I am 100% in agreement with your summary, and conclusion.

Regretably "the full support" of the UK pilots is completely neutered by that same legislation you (we ) are against.

That ,unfortunately, is the fact of the matter, and it is difficult, nay impossible, for a UK employee to contribute much "meaningful" support.

Frustratingly you maybe right.

I am not sure if refusal to travel from your factory in the UK to operate equipment in a factory in Portugal would be considered secondary action?

kungfu panda - I don't think you understand the setup with easyJet. There is easyJet and easySwizz. At present we operate different nationally registered a/c under different AOC's; we cannot fly each others a/c and we cannot operate together. We have different contracts. However we would refer to ourselves as colleagues.

Within easyJet we operate UK registered a/c from a number of different EU countries. We all fly the same a/c, we train together and we can fly together, however we have different contracts (different pay, leave, days off, pensions etc). We are all free to request base transfers and when we move we go onto the local contract irrespective of our nationality. When FO's come up for their command the base on offer may not be the same depending on the vacancy; it is up to them to accept the command and move or remain as an FO at their base of choice. Some bases are considered to have superior T&C; untimately it is the whole package (permanent contract, command, location) and so the decision is very subjective. easyJet would prefer to promote from within so when LIS was started those FO's coming up for command were offerred the command in LIS or to remain as FO's at their base until the next command vacancies arose. The local contracts on offer were lower than all the other contracts (a point well discussed on other topics on this forum). Some FO's chose not to accept the promotion and wait for the command at whatever base came up next, normally LGW, others chose the promotion at LIS; hence the view that some jumped the command list. As there were insufficient volunteers their were also direct entry fixed term contracts at LIS.

The base is now permanent so new/ammended contracts are being negotiated. Some of those commands want to transfer to other bases while the FO's who opted not to take the command may still be FO's; the fixed term contracts want a straight transition to permanent contracts without going though another interview, there may be other issues.

That brings us to where we are now. Whatever the situation in LIS as to the rights or wrongs of the pilots or company is not yet clearly understood by most of us on this forum. You are advocating we should support the strike of our colleagues in LIS purley because we are pilots, irrespetive of the law and our contracts or who is right or wrong. It has been clearly explained to you that we cannot refuse duties without jeopardising our positions. Some of us are uncomfortable at the prospect of operating whilst the LIS pilots are on strike and others are sympathetic but are objecting to the dates as it will interfer with their Christmas. So you see this is not as straightforward as you seem to think.

kungfu panda - some of us in the UK are happy with the status quo we have now and we see the unions on the continent as having too much power. It is of note that most who are objecting to our lack of action in this matter are not UK based. Perhaps somewhere inbetween would be ideal but we are where we are today with what we can do.

Thanks Stiglet, I appreciate your thorough and clear explanation.:ok: