Strike imminent at Brussels Airlines...

[regi]

dear regy,

As you maybe know an aircraft technician is not only moral responable for his job but also in a court of law this is called men slaughter. I know some examples of old class mates who got woke up out of bed by the federal police to answer some questions. I don't think an lorry mechanic see this people often. in regards to the nurse she can call a doctor when their is something she have to make a descion about the patient. As for us we have to make the descion on our own even somethimes with a high time pressure. That's one of the reasons why we get a refreshment course every 2 years about human factors to be aware that also we are just people who make mistakes but to know when your are going to make mistakes to reduce them to a minimum. So are you willing to take the responabilty for 100 lives? And for what price?

OK with this reply and the accountability. It reminds about the conviction of the railway people after the German Eschede railway disaster ( 100 casualties ) where the DB controller and a mechanic got convicted - despite there had been numerous faulty reports about the train wheels.
Please don't take my remark as a criticism on your job, it was a thaught by an outsider. ( I was not aware that mechanics could take decisions on their own without back up from higher up - and be accountable for that decision )
Your question "price ?" still stands. I don't know. As a consumer I automatically think "as cheap as possible". But as a passenger I would not like to be the victim of some cost saving subcontracting experiments when it goes wrong.

[cnc]

I was not aware that mechanics could take decisions on their own without back up from higher up - and be accountable for that decisio

you believed that some manager signed the daily check reports before the first flight of each a/c or runs to the gate if an a/c had a problem and a technician had to fix it?

[sn26567]

Before quoting salary figures, please state whether they are gross (before social security and tax deductions) or net. The net figures depend on so many factors (family, other revenues, etc.) that only gross figures should be quoted.

I cannot believe that a FA gets less than 1000 EUR gross salary.

[Crosswind]

To be more precise, all these netto salaries are roughly corrects, but you still have to add all the allowances which can grow up to 1500€ per month.

Basic salary, for a FO, first year, is 1800€ netto. You add 1000€ for allowances and you have a more decent number.

The problem is that you can't say allowances will stay for years. Management can decide to cancel night-stops (an actual big problem on the 737 fleet), to reduce this and that... Furthermore, once you're on hollidays or sicked, it's a big loss of revenue...

I've heared a very interesting rumor. Lufthansa would not be really happy about the working condition here in Brussels Airlines. German unions pay apparently a particular attention on the Lufth' subsidiaries "working force' costs" in order to avoid a situation where Lufthansa uses these cheaper companies for some routes instead of their own metal.

Personnaly, I'm quite happy with my salary, and in this company. Yes, I get a little more money than my colleagues, thanks to the grand-father rule (I keep my VEX pay scale)ans since I have a "new" contract I can benefit from large allowances.

For the rest, I'm afraid as soon the crisis is over, many pilots will leave massively the company for better skies elsewhere, leaving again the fleet with a drastic shortage of pilots (like in 2007 for example)...

They still have to learn...

[regi]

If everybody thinks the way you do Regi, soon enough every company would be out of employees and what good would that do? The balance should be in the middle, not tilted towards management, nor towards the employee.
Unfortunately the last years, due to the economic decline, management has gotten very easy (and sometimes even valid) reasons to tilt the balance a bit but they must be brought to attention that this can not last forever and the employee won't keep on taking cutbacks, they may not always be obvious, but the cutbacks are there.

Concerning comparing salary with other people: who cares? if people are jealous of this salary, then they should come and do the job, it is very simple really!!

Don't worry, I have no fixed ideas about labour conditions. Past experiences thaught me to look at both sides. I don't say who is good or wrong. As an independant working person I speak every day to employees, labourers, state officials and managers, sometimes large share holders/CEO's as well. And I see a constant red line in macro economics in the European model: pressure from the world market to adopt to wild capitalism, increasing power by large companies that can change legislation, abuse of the legal system. In 2008 we saw tension on the European labour market because the cost of living was suddenly increasing. Strikes and demonstrations. Than we had the sudden standstill in autum 2008. In 2009 came the special measures , such as temporarely unemployment for employees as well. I have witnessed several Belgian subsidaries of other European companies (certainly from France ! ) sending their personnel on unemployment because the work was shifted to the head office abroad.( because unemployment is for free for the employer in Belgium but not in France ) And as a Belgian tax payer, I don't like this.
You might have misunderstood me when it is about the salary. If salary is the main reason, an employee can change job. But there are many other criteria as well, and I don't judge people on it. I would even say: don't let salary be the only issue.
But...when managers receive high bonusses and the employees stay behind ( competition, cost reduction ,flexability blablabla) it becomes an issue. This bonus system is so sardonic: managers get a bonus when they can save on personnel cost.
Last week I was asked to give a quick advice about the business plan of a small company. The owner had some big problems. I frankly told him that if the highest profit is his major goal -IF - he should ennoy his personnel to such a degree that they would leave by themselves, hang on for another year and sell his factory and retire on Mauritius. But if he wants to keep his business for his children, he should invest in his company, take a smaller salary himself, drive normal cars instead of the > 100,000 Benz, train personell etcetera.
He would think about it. Meaning: he even considers the first option !

[regi]

I was not aware that mechanics could take decisions on their own without back up from higher up - and be accountable for that decisio

you believed that some manager signed the daily check reports before the first flight of each a/c or runs to the gate if an a/c had a problem and a technician had to fix it?

Hey, don't laugh, I admitted I am an outsider.

[tolipanebas]

Each time a union vs management topic pops up, salaries are quickly singled out as the focal element of disagreement, after which we immediately lose ourselves in pointlessly complicated discussions about gross vs net, Belgian vs foreign, pay vs allowances etc. Let's not discuss this any longer, since it is an extremely complicated matter anybody not working for an airline simply doesn't have enough benchmark knowlegde on really. Besides, the rant between unions and management is not about salaries, it is about general working conditions and the complete (dis)respect thereof.

As I have explained in my previous post, management has indeed made a habit of unilaterally suspending whatever provisions in our CLAs (NL: CAO, F: CCT) that don't fit the solution they come up with in case of yet another round of operational problems. While we can understand not everything can be foreseen, it really can not become common practice to have 2 types of operations: those under 'normal' conditions and those' in case of any irregularity' either. As last year has painfully demonstrated with an almost unstoppable stream of disruptive events, operational irregularies are an integral part of day-to-day airline operations and so there needs to be some comfort margin in the CLAs to cope with them in a normal way.

The managerial concept the best case scenario should always be taken as the normal standard and you thus only need to care for what is needed then, is ill-fated! SN needs more comfort margin in every category: more cabin crew, more cockpit crew, more technicians, more ground staff... not for when all goes smoothly, but for when things go wrong. That's when you need extra people to keep offering a good service and quality as SN wants us to do, without need to recall people from days off or even holidays for instance.

I think SN must still accept the full consequences of wanting to build an ever bigger network and being a full service alliance airline once again: operational irregularities somewhere on that network will occur more often and thus having low cost operations is no longer sufficient for the kind of premium airline SN is in the process of becoming.

Either they have an operational structure like a No Service Airline and then also take their attitude in case of irregularities, or they do like the Full Service Airlines do, but then they also need to have the staff and structures for it. At SN however, they want to do like the big boys, while remaining a LCC internally...
Obviously, that is barely possible in normal ops, but it stretches human resources very thin when things become really rough!

In comparison, this is what is happening at LH:
http://investor-relations.lufthansa.com ... eiter.html

[euroflyer]

hm, seems to be a bit of a mess here, from an outsiders point of view. Is it really that there is a "strike imminent"? Or is this just the opening for a good bargaining position (which would be fair enough ...).

To me, reading the posts here it is not so clear what the real problem is. Some speak about money (thereby thankfully completely confusing gross, net and so). Is it really that a captain at FR or easy earns > 10.000 and at Sn <5.000? Some say they should earn more and that, if others think it would be too much, those should just apply for the job themselves and shut up; but at the same time those people temselves claim they should get more, because colleagues in France or Germany earn more (why don't you just apply for a job in France or Germany than?). Other say it has nothing to do with money at all, only working conditions and others claim they do not want to see changes at all in the rules, the management should just follow the rules which are already in place. Hm, I hope the message to the management from the union was more clear and more a "one voice message" than the views in the forum here, otherwise there is little chance the management can do anything ...

and as rightly said, at the same time at "mother LH" there is a 'zero' result concerning money with cabin crew: "At the talks on remuneration, the two sides agreed on a pay freeze. The existing pay settlement is to be re-concluded unchanged for a period of 22-months, lasting up to 31 December 2011. "

[B.Inventive]

The strike is not as imminent as many people believe. Points have been made up, management is sitting down with the unions, the announcement is a declaration of intention in case management decides not to listen at all(which is part of the problem apparently). Let's hope they are not ignorant enough to actually make this happen.

Secondly, concerning wages: (But this is not really the focus point of the discussion really)
1. I confirm, RYR captains make > € 10000 NETT; B.air capt start off with < € 5000 NETT
2. the point of saying 'if you want the salary come do the job' applies unilaterally in all countries. If I was a pilot and would complain about not being payed enough in Belgium, it is because "in the pilot sector" the salary is under the average salary. Comparing a pilot salary to any other job is rather useless, it's like comparing apples and oranges. They both have their absolute weight, and an average weight. However it is useless to compare the absolute weight of an apple to the average weight of an orange, it IS however useful to compare the absolute weight of an apple to the average weight of an apple. You see the point I'm trying to get at?
3. People should stop using performance pay as integral part of their wage in discussions. Performance pay (in whatever form) is an extra, nothing more, nothing less and should not be used to compare wages because it's simply => you're sick = no performance pay at all. No guarantee to this extra is provided at all.

This being said, I really hope b.air manages to solve all problems in an orderly manner.

[euroflyer]

The strike is not as imminent as many people believe. Points have been made up, management is sitting down with the unions, the announcement is a declaration of intention in case management decides not to listen at all(which is part of the problem apparently). Let's hope they are not ignorant enough to actually make this happen.

Secondly, concerning wages: (But this is not really the focus point of the discussion really)
1. I confirm, RYR captains make > € 10000 NETT; B.air capt start off with < € 5000 NETT
2. the point of saying 'if you want the salary come do the job' applies unilaterally in all countries. If I was a pilot and would complain about not being payed enough in Belgium, it is because "in the pilot sector" the salary is under the average salary. Comparing a pilot salary to any other job is rather useless, it's like comparing apples and oranges. They both have their absolute weight, and an average weight. However it is useless to compare the absolute weight of an apple to the average weight of an orange, it IS however useful to compare the absolute weight of an apple to the average weight of an apple. You see the point I'm trying to get at?
3. People should stop using performance pay as integral part of their wage in discussions. Performance pay (in whatever form) is an extra, nothing more, nothing less and should not be used to compare wages because it's simply => you're sick = no performance pay at all. No guarantee to this extra is provided at all.

This being said, I really hope b.air manages to solve all problems in an orderly manner.

can agree to most you have wrote here; only, in order not to compare apples and oranges you have to
(1) compare gross salaries and not net salaries. Salaries after tax and social security contributions (=net income) is influenced by many factors which have nothing to do with the company which employs you and are therefore more an issue for the next national elections ...
(2) take bonuses into account. Of course you need to work with averages here to single out individual problematic situations and of course the base pay has to be attractive as well. But bonusses are a part of the overall package and if they are linked to clear and transparent performance indicators (both company related and related to individual performance) they are an important part of the whole picture.

Lets hope both sides will find a compromise acceptable to everybody; and of course it will have to be some form of compromise ...

[tolipanebas]

And still we're going on about pilot salaries, aren't we? I can understand it's the most popular discussion by far, but as said, it's not really the focal point of the dispute between management and unions right now
How could it, is is a strike warning issued by the unions of ALL categories of staff, so logically a more widespread discontent must be at the origin of all this, no?

The main reason for this radical step by the unions is the complete lack of respect from management.
Both disrespect of the current working rules (see the constant unilateral and in fact completely illegal suspension of contractual working rules due to so called unforeseen situations) as well as their refusal to improve those working conditions and adapt them to the new realities of SN as an alliance airline.

In the LH press release I've linked too, you can see that in return for a wage freeze, LH has agreed to longer rest times in between pairings, more days off and more guarantees for planning stability (i.e. no last minute duty changes) amongst some other comfort measures not publically communicated on.
As such, LH are quite heavily investing in significantly better working conditions for their cabin crews (just as they did last year for their pilots), something which is indeed highly important, not only for the staff itself, but in fact also for the company, as the product offered by them ultimately gets better from it, hence LH having agreed to making these material concessions.

SN on the other hand only looks at their spreadsheets, expecting its staff to be able to do miracles on a daily basis and any changes to the working rules that would cost them money are immediately ruled out! This constant state of denial as to what must be done to improve both our working conditions and to be able to offer the quality product SN wants to sell as a STAR alliance airline, as well as the flagrant way our current working rules are disrespected on an almost weekly basis, is indicative of the complete indifference of management towards the workload at this company and the very low respect for its staff.

[regi]

Tolipanebas:
I do understand your utter frustration. As I tried to make clear in previous postings , there is much more than just the cold figure of a salary slip.
The conflict can become so dangerous that , even if they would add a zero on your salary, you still would be angry. You are not a prostitute. And as far as I know something about prostitutes, even for them there are limits.
A very recent dispute in my world showed that constant nagging, ennoying of managment pays off. Hey, those managers also want to go home and they have a limited stress level. The weak point of the managment is their time. It would be great if you can disturb the agenda of the managment. All kind of ( legal ) guerilla tactics are fine for this. So in the long run, they will have to focus on the issues of the personnel, just to be able to follow their own time-managment.
The personell has 1 big defence and that is the illegal breach of contract by the managment, trying to cover it under the blanket of exceptional circumstances. Succes, and keep flying.