Part Time
 

Hi guys, need your help-
My company (small loco in the mid east) does not have an part time option yet. As a union rep, me and my fellow representatives need to work on it and to present a part time option. Some pilots came to us and requested that.
i wanted to understand whats going on in the big world in that regard.
-Does your company allow a part time pilot? (What kind of company/where)
- If so, how is it done?
- If you could write your own part time terms, how would you go about it?
Just to be clear- its the pilots that want it (want to study, another job, etc), so we want to phrase the best, most safe and pro-pilot contract ever before presenting to the company and fellow pilots.

Many thanks

Have you reached out directly to any other pilot unions?

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but I understood that part time working is written into UK employment law, and possibly European too?

I don't know about the employment law where you (OP) are, but obviously worth looking into.

Part time working is beneficial, in some cases essential, to employees to manage their child care or care of other dependants, and to be non discriminatory, it has to be offered to all employees. I don't think a company is obliged to allow all of its employees to work part time at once - just a percentage. In companies I have worked for, staff had to apply for part time working and get on a waiting list.

It's a no-brainer isn't it? If you need to cut your workforce down to 60% then keep ALL your staff on 60% It's better to have 60% of a (let's face it very good) pilots salary than 0% Keeping as many staff as possible on part time means that when an upturn happens, they're already in place.

DHL have great part time options: 50/57/60/66/75/80/83/92%

Part time in my co was granted Iaw co needs, so you could not demand it. Contracts down to 50% were given, the notable feature being that it was a percentage of days worked In a month for that percentage of salary, not hours on duty. Other benefits that were divisible, such as leave, days off and pension were also reduced. Rostering would then busily try and fit as much work as possible into the working period! I was on 75% and enjoyed having a predictable 7 days off for the foreseeable future. The is also a gain insofar your tax bill is reduced. The company still has the full costs of having you on the pay-roll such as administration and simulator/training costs, but it has a reserve of pilots who will probably work overtime on request. I always made up my lost salary working days-off but at my convenience.

When you say loco in mid east you mean Middle East (Union?)
If ME do you get hosuing allowance if so this is when it starts going south
P/T is very popular in Europe depending on tax thresholds e.g. pilots go P/T to keep under certain tax rates

Hi.
So i ment the middle east, small country...i dont want to completly identify myself not to hinder our negotiations. But again, my work now is still political- within the pilots.
The company is ofcourse for that option. Its the pilots that didnt make it happen, and i u derstand. We are ~50 pilots on 2 different fleets all flying short haul. Our card1 is 53.5 hours/month (turboprop fleet). We can block 5 days a month for whatever reason, and in general there is no need for part time, unless you are a student/want another job.
we want to give some pilots that option but:
1. How to do it without causing injustice with other pilots.
2. How to do it so the company will not take advantage.

not yet. I thought this forum could answer my questions. The market here is really tiny, 3 airlines and a half basically, so we dont have anyone relevant in our market.

Hi api.

Your questions.

1. Make sure your company is on board and prepared to increase numbers to maintain the effective headcount. eg if two pilots go 50% they need to recruit an extra pilot and accept the admin/HR/training costs.

2. One thing really helpful is a contractual Days Free of Duty figure so that you can’t be rostered to limits when you are at work.

Part time is a thorny issue, even in countries that have the absolute right for every employee to demand to be put on part time (but not for the company to force them).

First of all there is always a financial side that the company will use at some point or another during negotiations: While your working time decreases by a fixed amount, your productive working time decreases actually more than that percentage as the required amount of training, and days put aside for that, remains the same, no matter how little you fly.

And then there is of course the issue that there are as many part time schemes as anybody can envision. I have worked on monthly based part time (1 month off, 1 month work for 50%, different ratios for other percentages, including special winter deals like take one month part time, you get a second one fully paid), a certain number of days as part time per month, reduced hours per year, special roster patterns and so on. And in a previous company basically every employee could write their own part time scheme and it got approved, if not from the company directly then later on in front of a labour law court (yes, suing your own company was commonplace and no reason for dismissal or career disadvantage).

And as others have mentioned, especially if you have a mix between full time workers and part time workers, there is a tendency of companies, if the contract is not written carefully, that the part time workers have to fly more during their working days.

And in the end of course it depends all on the local labour laws, and those differ wildly.

If the company wants to introduce part time because they have a surplus of pilots but do not want to fire them, there is already a common goal, which can help negotiations. Usually, in that case, a flat reduction of working days is something both sides can live with, so every pilot works less in terms of days. If you are paid by the hour (not all pilot contracts work that way), then of course you have to balance hours across the pilot pool, and that can be difficult, especially if you have quite a variance in sector lengths. In that case i have worked in the past with a 3 month gliding period in which the hours have to be balanced across all pilots, but even that has some issues depending how overtime is calculated (do overtime thresholds reduce by the same percentage as part time?) and paid. And of course it increases complexity in crew planning which in turn costs money.

I would advise you to seek advice from pilot unions close to you, i know ECA has a wide range or contacts if that is close enough.

Having worked both part time and full time I found myself more exhausted on the part time schedule than my previous roster..
Part time was only offered to Capatins with more than 5 years in the company and really designed for those wishing to commute, or spend more consecutive days off at summer houses etc.
The issue we had was that as the FTLs were changed to EASA , the min days off changed to "min Rest between duties", this meant that I could work nearly 75% of my previous roster for 50% of the money.
We negotiated that "part timers" would finish their roster on an 'early " and start on a "late" this gave the max days off, however, the company required we be at "base" 24 hrs before the next schedule so that negated the advantage. The part time contract allowed for additional payments if pilots agreed to work "off days", however excluded compulsory days in the event of tech issues, so if you went AOG down route, all you got was more off days added, which we deemed fair.
Part timers had proportional holiday allowance and roster bidding, so no penalties there.
My employer regarded part time as an earned privilege not a right.

Part-time arrangements here ("national carrier" with turboprops. two narrow body jet fleets and a small long-haul operation):

Salary, number of working days, maximum flight/duty hours and overtime limits pro-rated with the same factor as the salary.

"Sweet spot" for the company is around 80% as this actually allows for higher productivity than full-time because rest time/minimum days off restrictions are less limiting. Below that fixed costs (training, uniform) start to become a burden.

While there are 1 month off - 1 month on and similar options, most part-time is done by just reducing the number of working days per month.

Overall it's quite popular with many pilots working 80-90%. The minimum is 60% (70% for long-haul) except for parental part-time.

Access to part-time is easy after the first two years. The company has a temporary recall option and there's a right to return to full-time (or more work) if the company hires.

There's also subsidized part-time from age 55, with 50% flying and 60% pay and 70% flying and 80% pay. Whether this makes sense economically for the company depends a lot on pay scales, age and career progression.

Good luck.