CEO Interview - part 3

Greg Russell on Negotiating principles 1: “We are finalising our thinking ... and in the first instance I need to discuss these issues with our Board.”

Purrrrllllleeeeaaaaassssseeeee!!!!!!, No chance of doing it before June 2008?  Not since July 2005.  We know, the new Chairman might support you more than the last, maybe he'll like your 'new' strategy?

Greg Russell on Negotiating principles 2: “This is one of the major issues for the organisation this year, they want to see it well handled...” 

TOO LATE! You have no idea how pissed off people are already; maybe you need to visit a major centre and have some more no BS meetings?

Greg Russell on Negotiating principles 3: “... I’m still pretty confident we will end up with a reasonable outcome and hopefully one that doesn’t engender quite the degree of acrimony that occurred here in 2005. At the end of the day that level of acrimony is bad for our business and its counter to what I am trying to do here and that’s create a much better organisation.”

You have some serious work to do to get us on board, you have ruled by fear, sacking underlings that have disagreed with you or even questioned you, we believe that you have ripped the guts out of our organisation during your “tour”.  Any thoughts of just leaving, we need a morale boost.  The level of support our direct managers get from Level 1 and his “in fear” Level 2s does nothing to dispel the acrimony coming out of all these ‘stupid’ decisions from on high. SDE, ALMs, AWAs, and the like.

Greg Russell on Communication: “... I don’t think we have still cracked it completely and it is still a very important challenge for Airservices and various levels of our management.”

Cracked what exactly?  If communication got any worse we’d think Joseph Goebbels himself was sitting in the big office.  Nothing but SPIN, SPIN, SPIN!

Greg Russell on what Greg has in mind: “... at this stage ... we are not able to go into

detail at the moment ...”

Oh come on man, roll at least one die, give us a freak’n bone here.

Greg Russell on ADS-B 1: “It was under-scoped to begin with and I don’t think our early

project management was adequate, but we’ve put a lot of work into it in the

past two years.”

As usual we tried to do the cheapest option and got burnt.

Greg Russell on ADS-B 2: We have changed suppliers; we now have Telstra as one of

the principal external suppliers involved and they are doing a good job. 

Did any one say significant legal issues?

Greg Russell on changes to Gyms: “ We’ve been reviewing ... employment package products ... we wanted to see value for money in terms of what we were

spending ...to make sure that a) we are getting good value for money and b) we’ve got appropriately qualified people involved in these roles and that’s what the new providers will bring to both Brisbane and Melbourne. I’m a part time gym person myself and I know how important these facilities are.”

So why then did you award the contract to a big faceless corporation, if you truly wanted report with gym users you would have realised that the ‘little people’ you sacked were part of our community, you robbed us again, way to go, all for a gold coin or two, maybe even the faceless corporation will cost you more. Greg you have demonstrated your obvious lack of compassion, but why SPIN this, were not buying, you may as well 'cold call'.

Greg Russell on the future focus 1: “Waypoint effectively would be our annual meeting with our shareholders - to report to them on how we’ve been progressing.”

Well no, it would be a meeting with key customers, the shareholders reps might be present but it would be a shareholders meeting now would it.  What happens if they are dissatisfied or stop believing the SPIN? Go elsewhere?  Nothing else other than Waypoint?

Greg Russell on the future focus 2: “first of all we need to satisfactorily

conclude the certified agreements ... a litmus test ... a changing spirit of better goodwill as we move to fix a lot of things that have been wrong with the organisation over the years.”

Well you know what to do, put a decent offer on the table, we’ll STFU if you do, we guarantee it.

Greg Russell on the future focus 3: “... to continue this process of reform and improvement within the organisation, especially the great work that’s being done in both the Air Traffic group and the TAS group at the moment.”

Great work, where?  Oh yes, we missed the SPIN

Greg Russell on the future focus 4: “The fourth is the emphasis ... on training.... an enthusiastic group ... I want to see it grow - train not just air traffic controllers and firemen,

but our technical people and our management as well.”

But Greg, you gutted the joint, you’ve removed trained staff and put in ‘educators’ who will turn out great ‘graduates’ who probably won’t know a TTF from an NDB. What are the numbers again?  What were they in 2004, what was planned?

Greg Russell reflects: “All in all, I’ve got to tell you it’s going to be a very busy year. My sense is that we are making progress and as I look back on the organisation I inherited

when I came here nearly 3 years ago, the change is very noticeable, hopefully for the better.”

NEWS FLASH - NEWS FLASH - NEWS FLASH, In case you missed it, we think you have f@#^KED the joint, please leave and get yourself another job.  Whatever your view of our comments, ask random staff if it’s been "for the better", go on we dare you.

PS Don’t sack them if you get an honest answer.

CEO Interview - part 2

Greg Russell on the reason for airspace closures:  “The problem that I see is that there is still a view amongst some of our controllers that they are not willing to accept overtime.” 

This is quality BS is it not?  How much Overtime is being worked, how does that compare to the traditional overtime rates; maybe the problem is that 1.85 is less (after removing travel time) than the previous agreement and the financial incentive isn't as good.  Maybe people have ‘hit the wall’ getting called every f#*&^’n day off, sometimes more than once. 

Greg Russell on fixing the airspace closures: “I appeal to the majority of our people who are decent and professional Air Traffic Controllers to understand that we are working to resolve this issue, they may think that it has come too late in some respects and in some respects frankly it has, but I am seeking their commitment to help us through this period.”

WTF, over.  Guilt up the ATCs to give up more days off, because you really are trying, “CROCODILE TEARS, Greg, CROCODILE TEARS”. 

Greg Russell on the latest staff plan: “Toward the end of June I will be putting my name to quite a comprehensive plan that will give our people in our operational areas in particular, Air Traffic Control, the Fire Service and our TAS group an undertaking from me about the recruitment, training and career development prospects for each of these critical areas of our business over the next five years.”

Putting your name to it, well obviously it’s better than the last two plans.  

What’s in the plan, what has happened or what you are going to do?  We want to know how you plan to fix it, not why it’s broken.  Any real numbers about retirements and early departures in it?  Any analysis about what is likely to happen if you only anti up CPI for the CA, vs if you put 12% on the table?

What do the WAYPOINT sycophants say?

Greg Russell on the new government: “ ... ultimately we need to ... build strong relationships with the government of the day. We have put quite a lot of effort into building a relationship with our still relatively new minister and his office. I’m pleased with the progress we are making in this area.”

As far as I can tell Big Tony is not planning on sacking me yet.

Greg Russell on oil prices: “I think an organisation like us ... needs to be empathetic to the pain that our customers are going through. What I mean ... is that we have to continue to pay close attention to our costs because ... the airlines fund this organisation...”

In other words, the are hurting, we need to reduce costs, so a ‘bloody good pay-rise’ is a long way off.  Perhaps when we made $106M profit we could have used some of that cash for good will.  We know, we know.

Greg Russell on airborne delays: “... we have to be much more innovative about how we tackle the issues of delays, additional flying, additional fuel burn and certainly the question of emissions. ... their costs at the moment is fuel burn and that’s something we can do something about. We’ve done a lot in the past, but its something we’ve got to do even more in the future.”

How about starting with enough staff to ensure that we don’t need to reduce traffic to manageable levels with reduced staff?  How about avoiding TIBA ‘fly arounds’ due no ATS.

Greg Russell on the NOC: “ is principally designed to get more efficiency out of the national airways system and I think there is very considerable scope for the whole industry - airlines, airports and ourselves as air traffic providers - to work much more closely to achieve that aim.”

Ahhhh Greg, staffing?  We hear applicants were rejected because they couldn’t be released, what is the NOC, a database of faults, incidents, media issues and reasons why delays are occurring?  Anything proactive happening?  If not, when will it start?

Greg Russell on the industry’s views of ASA: “I think the organisation is generally regarded as being responsive ... and I don’t just mean that in the sense of major airlines ... I had one of the vice presidents of AOPA in here yesterday and he ... comment {on} ... the work we have done on the general aviation survey and what it’s going to teach us about what we need to do to improve our service to that sector of the business.

Well only if you actually do something about the results, tabulating the result isn’t actually doing anything. We think AOPA has been sold a pup.

Greg on the federal budget:  “To some extent, we are insulated from it, as I was explaining yesterday at Senate Estimates, Airservices obtains all of its funds off budget.”

Well durrrrrr, you made $106M last year, paid tax and paid a dividend.  We are off budget, because we actually contribute to general revenue, where no ‘figure’ is included for general revenue inclusion; so if you returned a zero dividend, the government wouldn’t be annoyed in anyway shape or form; because it wouldn’t effect their position; it would probably effect yours though.

Greg Russell on the CA, 1: “...a lot of people in Australia are being affected ... Some are suffering under the increases to interest rates, and there are some signs that those increases have not finished.  Certainly the question of fuel price and the knock on effect that it is having on everything that is transported by road means that a lot of people that are doing it tough at the moment.”

So getting to work without a legitimate public transport option is hurting your workers too; we (mostly) all have mortgages or pay (higher) rents; CPI rises won’t cut it in the global market; don’t force us to leave, because many of us will.

Greg Russell on the CA, 2: “... our employees in Airservices are relatively well paid ... Its not an excuse for us to not take account of the movements in costs,  ...”

But I will, if you over paid bunch of sooks think you’re getting more than CPI (which is a bloody good pay-rise, right?) then you’ve got to be smok’n somth’n. 

Greg Russell on the CA, 3: “...wage increases need to be reasonable, there does need to be restraint and I think that’s to some extent going to be a fairly tough balancing act.”

Yep, use aint getting nuthin.

Greg Russell on the CA, 4:  “The Government is clearly concerned about a wages fed inflation spiral which could easily develop based upon the inflationary pressures that are in the economy at the moment.”

Oh, piss off!  The inflationary effects of less than 1000 peoples wages is next to nothing in the nations economy.   It’s ok for the like of Dixon and Russell to get 100% pay-rises, cause they are worth it, but you worker bees get the honey that we decide, when we decide it.

Greg Russell on the CA, 5:  “My own personal test is what would a reasonable person think is a reasonable outcome and that’s broadly the framework that I will be working in. There is certainly the issue of wage increases, and then there are also productivity issues. I see some opportunity to further improve the way we operate and to share those productivity gains.”

So everything that has happened over the last 3 years counts for naught; we need to produce more to get more.  So we need to trade-off conditions, such as sick leave, or rostering principles, to get more than CPI, F()CK!!!!!, here we go again. Going to ignore growth, again? Or produce more 'dodgy' figures to justify your stance, hell it worked a treat last time.

Greg Russell on the CA, 6: “One of the most satisfying things I’ve done over the last few months has been to visit the childcare centre in Melbourne that we operate now with Qantas. It’s just an amazing facility, and I know that quite a number of our staff in Melbourne are using the centre. “

How many employees are getting this type of ‘benefit’?  Nice try but no CIGAR Sir, too little too late.

Greg Russell on the CA, 7: “I want us to be a good employer and I am mindful of the fact that we are in a competition everyday not just to attract people, but to develop them, give them meaningful jobs and to retain them.”

Greg, sincerely it’s simple.  LISTEN TO YOUR MANAGERS AND STAFF!

We don’t want extras we want fair and reasonable treatment, we don’t want to be treated like numbers or assets but people.  We want real flexibility regarding work/life balance; this is more bodies at the consoles, help when you need it, real training and stop economic based short cuts, cuts in training, reduced facilities etc.

And because we won’t get any of that (dream the impossible dream), just pay us more so we don’t piss off.  Retention, huh?  The ‘development’ of which you speak, isn’t targeting us as the majority of your employees are beyond your ‘development’ targets.  Great for the new entrants, if you really get a structure, but what's in it for those employed for 10 years+.

Greg Russell on the the workplace: “I’ve always said that if you enjoyed coming to work and you got paid for it, that’s probably the best outcome you could imagine in your working career.”

Whoops, it is easy, where is your 2008 staff satisfaction survey?  Where is the communication and management structure that we asked for, in the Sh!tter that’s where, can anyone else spell “cock-up”.

Greg Russell on the negotiations 1: “... the engagement process has begun. There have been a number of meetings with the unions and what I am hopeful of doing is dealing with some preliminary things that needed to be discussed.”

Needed by whom?  It’s old school delay tactics, don’t talk tacks until the drawing board is hung; threaten a low offer, get them all unsettled, offer something a little better and watch them jump at it in fear of getting a worse offer.  Well it worked last time.  Perhaps you need to read the staff once more, it won’t work this time; people are expecting pay-back, don’t believe it, well how are the June TIBA/TRA stats looking, morale plummeting, perhaps people are no longer enjoying coming "to work and getting paid for it".

Greg Russell on the negotiations 2: “What I am referring to there is some of the employment instruments we are seeking to resolve for instance in the ATC group with respect to our ALMs and Unit Tower Managers.”

The F#%^KING New Government dumped the AWA option, bastards!  Maybe a sh!t ALM CA offer will get through, we’ll break them down.  These are the people ‘selling management’, don’t you get it?

Greg Russell on the negotiations 3:  “Also from what I understand from Civil Air, a lot of work has been done by the Union to have a look at the environment they are looking for.”

Even read the Vision document, nope, the OZ headline was enough?

Greg Russell on the negotiations 4: “From a Management viewpoint we are getting ourselves well prepared, we’ve looked at a number of options in terms of wage, non-wage productivity issues. I have asked that they be well and truly costed so that we know really what will give us the best outcomes and we don’t have to then wait from one iteration to the next that in some cases can take weeks and draw the whole process out.”

Ahh so it is all about cost.

Greg Russell on the negotiations 5: “I’d like to see us lock ourselves up and negotiate and do nothing else until we come out of the room with a deal. I want to keep our people informed in the process, and undertake the negotiations in a genuine spirit of trying to reach an outcome in a much shorter timeframe - and I think that will do us a lot of good.”

So you want us informed, but you want negotiations done in a lock up?  Well which is it?  You want a short time frame, yet you waste the best part of three months before even laying down one card?  WTF?

Greg Russell on the negotiations 6: “...So, some people have criticised me ... we are engaging but the negotiation itself is still a little while off and I am hoping we can make it in a much more condensed format than it has been so far.”

Do you really mean that, well we won’t be holding our breath.  Engaging but not negotiating, so have negotiations have begun or not?  Why didn’t you seek engagement over the last 3 years, why wait until now.  Claims that Civil Air doesn’t represent the members is always stated, yet you need to engage them for staff opinions before negotiating, well which is it, they don't or don't represent?

Greg Russell on the negotiations 7: “I think one of the criticisms I had of the former process was that it was stretched out over many, many months in 2005 and I think it was debilitating on our employees. I think the whole exercise left a sour after taste. There has

got to be a way to improve it and that’s really what I’m trying to achieve this time around.”

NEWS FLASH - NEWS FLASH - NEWS FLASH  It’s already too long, and we have that same sour taste, please put your clothes back on and step back, we don’t like it, another Certified SHAFTING coming on.

CEO Interview - part 1

Thanks for all the feedback and due to popular demand we will tackle this one now, even though we think it speaks for itself, he doesn't get it.

Well let's summarise the interview:

Greg Russell on ATC reform: “...and frankly there has been some terrific work done.”

Oh come on, you’re smoking something!

Greg Russell on The New Management:   “I do think there is some further work to do in terms of up-skilling some of our managers in that area and getting them to focus on their new accountabilities”

No shit Sherlock; what are the chances of getting them away from the supervisor consoles to up-skill them? To busy chasing their tails?  Maybe the cutting of the numbers half way through wasn't the best move, then again taking more operational staff away from consoles would have crippled the business, no wait, too late.

Greg Russell on the first 18 months: “...making the place more efficient – some of that was cost reduction; there were areas where we were clearly wasting money. But it is not all about cost reduction and I think now the dial has moved.”

It was all about cost cutting, the dial has moved because you can’t maintain your minimum requirements; you’ve got your fingers in the cookie jar.  You clearly cut too far, there were no business cases or justification for doing most of what you did.  You ruled by fear, those who objected got the chop.  Those who didn’t object, believed your rhetoric, now almost to the letter, they don’t.

Greg Russell on the next (the last)18 months: “Having built some good systems, rationalised parts of the organisation and reduced our costs, we turned to fixing issues that had plagued this business for a long time – proper recruitment, proper training of our people and the whole issue of workforce planning and development of our people.”

We repeat, you’re smoking something!  Workforce planning has always been paramount particularly in ATC, the previous managers, George and Andrew had weekly discussions with managers about the numbers, they always argued too high, so did you. You banked on technology, then didn't support it's implementation, typical.

Greg Russell on the changes in the last 12 months: “Undoubtedly our focus on workforce planning.”

Only because of all the TIBAs; you were told (or at least your Level 2’s were told) not to proceed with some or all of SDE but you went ahead anyway.  How are the age profiles looking now?  How are we going to staff new towers?  Avalon, Williamtown on weekends and after RAAF hours, Karratha?   What's next? How are we going to build a 'bow-wave' for the new towers?

Greg Russell on staff planning: “We produced the first workforce plan in the early part of 2006 ... again in 2007 and we’ve just completed it again this year and the further we get into this the more I’ve come to an appreciation of just how critical is it ...”

The first plan in 2006?  BS mate, again in 2007, did it say numbers up or down?  What are the numbers like now, what's with 897?  We don't believe the numbers, if you did, you'd publish them far and wide for comment, SDL by SDL.

Greg Russell on staff shortages and the last 6 months: “the staff shortages based around some of the Melbourne sectors have settled a little, we are still having some difficulties though, particularly in the Sydney/Brisbane sectors. ...our numbers of operational ATCs are 21 below our required number of 897.”

What are the real numbers, we understand one SDL is nearly that short by itself, are you being loose with the truth Greg, what makes the 897, what's the breakdown?  SDL by SDL, project by project?

The majority of these shortages are a direct result of your SDE; in some cases you added 1/3rd extra controller jobs in the name of efficiency?  So how’s that working exactly?  Is there less or more holding into Sydney, into Brisbane or into Melbourne?  Obviously it’s more efficient.

Greg Russell on recruitment: “..we’ve got to recruit now for the future of the organisation and I think we referred to, back in January, the importance of building up enough of our employees particularly in the Air Traffic Control group and also in the fire service, so that we reduce this enormous dependency on institutionalised overtime.”

Institutionalised overtime, you’re not wrong, all those that work overtime in the current climate should be institutionalised.

Greg Russell on increasing staff: “...there has been a lot of pain in this process, there have been a lot of people who have I think put up with continuing levels of overtime but I made a commitment in January to fix this issue, and we have been doing that.”

You've realised you've got to open the purse strings and recruit people, it hurts.  Fixing it how exactly, recruiting abinitios? retaining people? recruiting more global recruits? recruiting more RAAF controllers?  You told us it would be fixed by June, hello, hello, what month is it?  Didn't say which June?

Greg Russell on the Training College: “There has been a significant amount of work for instance going on in the Airservices Learning Academy in Melbourne.  The appointment of a new team is almost complete and we are putting additional resources into bringing people back into the organisation, in some cases to deliver the training we need for accelerated and additional courses for Air Traffic Controllers.”

You’ve spent what nearly $50M on new simulators and technology, with not enough TGOs’ to drive it, with not enough instructors to make exercises, what with all the extra trainees in the system.  Accelerated courses, read shortened, removing basics from the college where economies of scale work, and putting the ‘core skills’ back to field training, yeah smart move, NOT!  

In the past 18 months, did we cut the shit out of the training resources and systems?  Didn't we reward managers for doing that, no wait they were making it more efficient.

Greg Russell on training results: “... I am confident more of our people are going to see more of these resources come out of our training facilities.”

GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out!  Is it true some recruits are going to be employed to meet the numbers but be put in holding patterns awaiting a "real course start date", as opposed to the official one, field training before sim training, novel, a waste nope? 

Is it true you've lowered the skills bar to ensure we get the numbers in, despite not meeting the required minimum's in previous recruitment efforts?  Sounds like a great way to resolve the crisis, waste resources on training people who will never make it.  Maybe they can get to the field and bang a few together, that will help.

Meeting 3 - 17 June 2008

Another NOTHING Day.

All reports from the parties is that the employer has nothing concrete to offer, except a promise for a presentation (read - "death by powerpoint") after the next board meeting, the presentation is to be made on July 3 2008.

That Board meeting is scheduled for 24 June 2008, some 2 months after negotiations were to commence and they still haven't got a sign off from the Board.  Sign off of what?  The final deal? Or the initial offer?

Funny we were thinking that negotiations have commenced, they've gone no where (well what were we expecting?), but the deal is to be ticked by the Board on 24 June 2008; which deal, the initial deal or the final deal?

Rumours from other sources tell one of our members that Big Tony, The new minister, has given the green light for "substantiated productivity based" pay rises.

So the folks in WA are generating the worth of our pay rises.  Revenue up by 11%, so we should expect an 11% offer then CPI annual increases.  Will this represent a "Bloody  good pay rise?"  That will be up to you to decide, we believe an offer of that ilk will be a slap in the face.  We also believe they will not make such a generous offer.

What will be the employers 'pillars'? Perhaps a cap on sickleave, limiting the days without certificate or the absolute "business requirement" to introduce fatigue based rostering (otherwise known as removing PORS).  So trade offs required to get a "Bloody good pay rise"; which in our view will not represent value for trade, again.

Think about the last agreement and overtime change, 1.85 for AD vs 1.57 plus 2 hrs travel on ED vs 1.18 on OT; sure a leg up on OT, but most will now agree the ED value trade was a dud; and possibly as a direct result, the cheapening of overtime costs, the employer has taken more liberty with staffing than it otherwise would have.  Remember those cancelled abinitio courses in 2006?

And what of retention, will there be a defence styled retention bonus?  $25K after 3 years?  Like you, we wait to see the offer; but a little tip for ya, don't hold your breath.