SDE, the biggest waste of ATC resources any of our team can recall; and that includes all those years training on NAS and TAAATS.
Some work groups have been effectively isolated from SDE, if you work in a regional tower you may have had a switch in management, but effectively, same old same old.
If however, if you work in Brisbane or Melbourne Centre, with the exception of the TMAs you will have noticed (although TMA controllers may have also noticed) what SDE has done to the sector groups. Losing portions of airspace by tinkering with boundaries, or moving parts of a sector to another group, splitting levels so now there is Regional Services (low) and East Coast Services (high) doing what was once a single sector.
Some of the splits have ignored 10+ years (maybe 30 years) of efficiencies in the previous system, the reasons why boundaries were where they were, including the vertical ones, reduced co-ordination, traffic management, reduction in complexity etc.
We have seen regional airspace becoming largely DTI sectors, with some controlled airspace abutting those areas. We've seen multiple examples of 5-6 sectors open when previously there would have been 3 open; because of the rating mixes or 'facilities' issues; you can't put the roles together for technical reasons.
So now we need more ATCs working the coal face than before, based on an efficiency argument? What? That's right, we're better able to adjust...
Then at the same time we duplicated resources required, we removed close to 80 people from Team Leader roles who held traffic ratings and put in the ALM structure where the new managers can't work effectively with those that they manage so they don't. (Well except for dozens of ALMs who still hold operational ratings and work operational shifts).
We have seen an almost complete dereliction of other non operational roles such as Training College Instructors , Projects, GTS, Safety, Check and Standardisation etc. All to improve our flexibility going forward.
We have recruited about 1/4 of the Global Recruits (20.5 coming online) we sought to recruit and are claiming it a success; but we aren't seeking to recruit more in that manner.
Read, there is no way you are getting more 457 Visa's; recruit Australians first and then when those stocks are depleted come back and ask again.
We are aggressively increasing our general ATC recruiting drive and the numbers we take; yet there is no evidence of this campaign. We are remodelling our training "ACADEMY" to be better focused on education not Air Traffic Control, what a ravingly stupid idea, we need practical ATCs who can move aircraft, not educated ones.
Stop gap measures may include instructors in ATC theory that have never even held a rating; great, but they did the abinitio course that counts right?
Then after all those remodelled business improvements (cost cutting) we still get shit flung at us by the folks on the Civil Air forum and those responsible for Certified Shafting. Philistines!
And now it's apparent that we have "an over reliance on overtime", solution, make it harder for them to go sick, done, idiots, why do we have Level 3s, holy crap there's another million per annum, wow, that must look attractive a flatter business model etc.
We have also just learnt that the employer is still 3 weeks away from making an offer, why, well this is what we predicted in early May http://certifiedshafting.blogspot.com/2008/05/ding-ding.html
WAYPOINT 2008 is where they announce to industry what the 5 year charging plan will be. This is what they will then use to justify their inability to open up the purse strings and reach inside; because they will be returning all but a modest profit back to the industry. And they will clearly factor in a modest ATC wages growth that will be 'locked in' after this announcement. Therefore in their minds the only other way to get more money in your pocket will be to surrender your valuable conditions (which hamper their business) for that extra productivity.
Time will tell if we are on or off the money, "wanta bet?"
No comments:
Post a Comment