Why we endorsed a “NO vote” in 2005.

In our last edition of Certified Shafting, we endorsed a “NO VOTE”; this was not a position taken by Civil Air, who were effectively neutral and Airservices was promoting a “YES VOTE”.

So why did we say to Vote NO, three years ago?

Essentially your employer gave you nothing.  They locked away employment conditions for less than community wages growth.  You achieved through your bargaining one extra hour of work for essentially extra recreation leave.  The hours of extra work equated to more hours than the leave granted across the board.

Your employer failed to concede on any element in the log of claims.

We encourage you to Vote No, because it in our minds was worth at least risking the costs of arbitration to at least ask the hard questions about were we getting what we deserved.

It is pretty clear by Australian standards we did not achieve all that could be achieved.  By world ATC standards we are now amongst the lowest paid when assessed against comparable countries.  This is not to say our negotiators failed us, they merely played the cards available to them given the level of support demonstrated by those covered under the agreement.

We warned of the low rate for AD hours.  We predicted an increase in AD hours as ultimately AD was becoming a more ‘profitable’ option rather than pursuing full staffing.

We predicted record profits being achieved by the employer without ‘real’ profit sharing to you the generators of the profits; locked in at a maximum 1% ‘bonus’.

We warned that FPC status was dead; we didn’t predict the hoop jumping required to progress up the ‘annual increments'.