I just heard that there have been 28 days of disruption over Europe by striking air traffic controllers this year.

The chaos and misery inflicted on traveller’s is bang out of order, let alone the enormous cost to the travel industry.

It costs and average of £100 per passenger per night when flights are displaced. The cost are huge and these get passed on to the customer – you and me.

Some struggling travel companies have even gone bust due to these additional costs tipping them over the edge. Thousands of customers loose money and have their holiday plans ruined. Nobody wins!

So, should the powers to be make it an imprisonable offence to disrupt air travel except in circumstances of national emergency?

How exactly are the costs being passed on to me?

How exactly are the costs being passed on to me?

Higher prices!!

Doesn’t bother me, as I don’t fly.

“So, should the powers to be make it an imprisonable offence to disrupt air travel except in circumstances of national emergency?”

Absolutely. Anyone who dares question their managers or working conditions should be imprisoned, wait, wont that be expensive and over work the prison service? What if prison guards strike?

Best thing to do is to execute anyone who dares to question authority or try to stand up for their rights.

why are they striking?

In 20years time air travel will seem as quaint and unlikely as travelling on monkey powered hover shuttles.

Higher prices for air travel is surely a good thing…polluter pays etc.

why are they striking?

Pay – obviously.

effing onions.

gwaelod – Member

Higher prices for air travel is surely a good thing…polluter pays etc.
except the extra money is just going towards hoteliers – not any kind of pollution mitigation type stuff…

Do they get paid as well as UK ATCOs? If you work at Heathrow control tower you take home about £100K

Best thing to do is to execute anyone who dares to question authority or try to stand up for their rights.

Don’t be ridiculous!

Protest by workers doesn’t have to involve the general public!

There are many ways they could inconvenience their managers without affecting the public.

Militant unions need a kick up the backside. They often aren’t even supported by their own members! They are totally out of touch, just troublemakers out to destroy those businesses that give everyone a living.

spongebrain.

The whole point of striking is to cost the employer money. Its the only thing they take notice of.

They often aren’t even supported by their own members!

Evodence?
Strikes cannot occur without the support of the membership. Unions represent their members wishes, they do not impose on the members.

How on earth could you make striking an imprisonable offence? – go to work or go to gaol?

Ridiculous even by your standards – or was this a windup?

gwaelod – Member

Higher prices for air travel is surely a good thing…polluter pays etc.

Yes, if you fly every week. Most people fly once or twice a year.

The private individual does far more harm to the environment by the consumption of energy in the home. As the bulk of the housing stock is poorly insulated, huge amount of additional Co2 is needlessly pumped into the atmosphere. The same goes for motor vehicles – they insist on huge fuel inefficient models and make many uneccessary journeys.

Percentage of total emissions from UK air travel:2%
Percentage of total emissions from domestic heating: 43%

Air travel is not the problem. In terms of transport, shipping cheap goods around the world’s oceans and people holidaying on luxury liners is[i] properly environmentally damaging. The CO2 we as individuals introduce on our annual holiday is a tiny fraction. So let’s keep things in perspective.

Polluter pays? We already do (far too much), but import duties on goods should be massively increased to dicourage these movements. As a polluter, then you’d then be paying your fair share.

If you think about pollution, the only solution is to stop consumption, but no government on this planet trully buys into going green. They need the tax revenues too badly to do the right thing!

can we not just deport them or hang them or something.Imagine mentioning safety to concernt to your bosses and they ignore you.What kinda of person would then try and make flying safer. Boils my weewee burn them Bob burn them ALLLLLLLL

FFS do you never tire of writing the same old stuff?

They often aren’t even supported by their own members!

Do they use mind control or mafia enforcers to get them out via the independently scrutinised election ballots – this country at least?

How many union members have to vote and what constitutes a majority in order to call a strike?

djglover – watching the news tonight and listening to the story they were reporting that the Spainish air traffic controllers get £298,000!!!!!

surley that cant be correct?

si FPTP simple majority no minimum % turnout as in all other UK elections here- PR for assemblies iirc??.
You cannot make people vote[currently] or infer what they think if they dont -some will try though.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6991798.ece

Of 2,300 controllers, ten were paid between €810,000 (£725,000) and €900,000 last year. A further 226 were paid between €450,000 and €540,000 and 701 were paid between €270,000 and €360,000.

The average basic salary is €200,000 but most double or triple this amount by working overtime.

😯

monkey powered hover shuttles.

These i must see 😆

Wont happen as the little feckers just go on strike asking for more bananas and tetley tea

Tandem Jeremy, abusing me like you often do is sure sign of your lack of intelligence! I’m tired of your far left wing ideology and general misguided views. You are a waste of space “Tedious Jeremy”! 👿

Strikes cannot occur without the support of the membership.

They only require a minority of support due to their own unbalanced rules and so you are just WRONG on this notion!

Unions represent their members wishes, they do not impose on the members.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! They decide what they want to do and just steam ahead! The members get railroaded – BULLIED – FACT! I’ve been there! When I was working in a manufacturing environment, the “tail” continually “wagged the dog”. That factory eventually closed along with thousands of others, not because of the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s politics, but because unions made those businesses uneconomic by their perpetual demands and disruption to production. Corporations got sick of it and moved their operations to other parts of the world where people have a “can do attitude” and where their costs were much lower. Britain kust ended up with a load of people on benefits who thought/think they are owed something.

How on earth could you make striking an imprisonable offence? – go to work or go to gaol?

I didn’t say that!! In your inimitable irrational way, you have twisted what i have said. I said “should disrupting air travel be made an imprisonable offence?”. Striking is not a human right! The Police are not allowed to strike (and rightly so), so why should anyone?

I remember driving down the Highway near News International HQ back in the 80’s. It was 10pm and we’d just left a restaurant after am area meeting and were dropping off some spares at our office (in the Highway). We were stopped by a baying angry mob of several hundred miners who’d come down from up north to riot with the sacked print workers. They were ready to turn my car over unless i told them i supported their strike – the cxxts! It was a very intimidating position to find your self in. Those guys were totally, wholly in the wrong. Fortunatly the Police escorted us away from the incident.

The fact of the matter was that unions had created a situation where a print type setter could earn several times what they were worth (something like £80,000 per annum in 1985!!??). Murdock was sick of this nonsense and set up a computerised system in Wapping which made the print worker’s jobs redundant. The place was built like a fortress because Murdock knew he was going to have a fight on his hands from violent militant unions.

People with far left wing views should move to a communist country! They would fit in well there with their Marxist ideals! People like this have no commercial awareness and are just a cancer to a thriving ecomomy, spreading their poison!

The UK won’t ever get back on it’s feet with people like this around continually “shoving a spanner in the works”!

I expect TJ will run squealing to the mod. on here, asking for me to be banned. I hope so! It would be a good job because trying to get through the thick skulls of people like him IS a total waste of time!

Average pay for Spanish ATCO €250,000. Made worse by the fact that they’re nearly all absolutely incompetent. Being an air traffic controller in Spain is about as close to being God as you’ll get for a Spaniard.

So, should the powers to be make it an imprisonable offence to disrupt air travel except in circumstances of national emergency?

That’s what AENA were reported as trying to do yesterday. Adios workers rights, best give all the power to the good, honest and charitable employer.

That factory eventually closed along with thousands of others, not because of the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s politics, but because unions made those businesses uneconomic by their perpetual demands and disruption to production.

Now I get it. 🙄

I just heard on sky news that Spanish air traffic controllers earn 300k!!!

WTF have they got to feel agrieved about..?!

I expect TJ will run squealing to the mod.

Nope – just laugh at your stupidity.

One point – what is the diference between

“should disrupting air travel be made an imprisonable offence

And

go to work or go to gaol?

If you have to go to work or else go to gaol it is slavery.

Even for you this is prime stupidity.

Theyre not on strike, theyre not allowed to by law.

They all phoned in sick today, or got their wives , gf,s and partners to do it, they have been thjreated with prioson so may be going back a bit faster now.

have any of you thought about actually being an ATC? Christ, talk about high stress occupation! One slip and several hundred people are dead. Possibly strewn over a city. I wouldn’t have that stress for €500,000

” People like this have no commercial awareness and are just a cancer to a thriving ecomomy, spreading their poison!”

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha (at you not with you SB – you seem the type that would need that clarified!)

I was forced to join a union back in the 70’s, the NGA. due to their closed shop practices the print/publishing company I worked for HAD to have a certain number of people as union members, and as several were freelancers and SLADE members the NGA insisted on parity, so I HAD to join. Subs were £1.72/week, out of my pay of £12/week, a pretty high percentage. When I was threatened with redundancy, all the Union could say was ‘oh, we’ll try to find you a job somewhere if we can’. That was it, no effort to make my job safe, or threats to the owner. I felt absolutely abandoned after paying a small fortune in subs. So much for union solidarity. As it happened I kept my job, but no thanks to the frackkin’ union. I have nothing but contempt for union leaders as a result, they have nice featherbedded jobs with posh cars paid for by the membership and they don’t seem to give a toss about the grassroots membership. I read recently that a strike had been called by one union, forget which one, after 7% of the 16% membership who actually voted, voted for a strike. That’s democratic? It’s the 60’s/70’s militant ‘let’s stick it to the bosses’ attitude all over again, and it makes me sick, the BA strike’s the same, best pay and conditions in the industry and the greedy bastards want more.

Why do I get the feeling that spongebob does the sort of job where if he went on strike, nobody would notice.

Mmmm, I would feel much more secure if they were paid peanuts and had no job security, after all, what’s the worst that could happen?

Well as it happens, yes, i’m an ATCO…not a Spanish one unfortunately, but here’s my take on it:
Firstly please don’t tar all ATCO’s with the same brush-we are on a fraction of the pay of the Spaniards and shift a hell of alot more traffic. Some of us do earn 100k+ but only at the very busiest units, and only when what we term as ‘top of the scale’ i.e you’ve been employed for 10+ years AND do a whole raft of other jobs-training,rostering,staffing issues(the list is endless). The responsibility of the job when the sh*t hits the fan is immense-but many of us thrive in such situations. In short I think we’re worth our salary, but then I look at pals of mine who earn double or triple what I do by repping/management roles etc

UK ATCO’s have not seen a real time pay rise for several years although the top management types last year received 6 figure bonuses for taking our pension to the cleaners. In a way I really can’t blame the Spanish ATCO’s-those guys have got some backbone and stand up for what they really believe in-although you never read about in the press one of the big issues is privatisation of the industry..what we believe in the ATC world to be the most unsafe step this industry could make.

The reason they get paid so much is that they’re contracted to work a very small number of hours – but get paid a HUGE amount for overtime shifts, and their overtime hours (unlike ours) are mostly unregulated. This means they can actually do more overtime per week than rostered shifts (and yes, they do have a god complex). But who’s to blame? The Spanish Govt and aviation authorities give the ATCO’s their contracts and if your boss suddenly said you’re to take a 50% pay cut AND work 50% more rostered hours I think you may be tempted to phone in sick!

I must say it has been nice not have the planes coming over today. 😆

I dont know what their problem is.Why not ask one?

beckett to the forum.. beckett to the forum!

Spongebob, am I right in thinking you typed

Striking is not a human right!

I think you will find that it is entirely my choice to work or not. The consequences may influence my decision but in the end it is, and should be, an individuals choice to stay in a job and fight for what they believe in rather than simply leave.

Lots of the manufacturing work you so lovingly remember seems to have gone to places where the cost of living is less (thanks to a shorter time being “commercial” so inflation has been less) and where workers have no rights, so simply have to put up with whatever they are given.

Just because you have had a bad experience of being told what to do by a union does not therefor make all unions completely unaccountable behemoths intent on bringing down the capitalist world.

Who gives a monkeys if “The UK” gets back on it’s feet if the only way to do it is to repeatedly, and heavily, dump on the employees/general population ensuring that only a wealthy few actually get back on their feet? It seems to take a very, very rich capitalist before philanthropy great enough to take over from the welfare state kicks in.

Why would anyone run squealing to the mods to get you banned for saying what you think? Or is that just another patch of paranoia about the rest of the world trying to destroy your bit of it?

Oh, and just to clarify, I would love a society where everyone works to their ability and it looked after in their times of need and reciprocates when others are needy. The only problem with my vision of a beautiful world is that some will always want to do less, and others will want to take more.
The problem always seems to be not in the system (capitalism, communism, whatever) but the people.

Basically we are the weak link, not the systems we put in place to try and mitigate our inadequacies.

+1 eat-more-cheese

While I agree, they were given the contract – I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot now everyone realises just how much they’ve been earning – tbh a bit like the Printers in the 80’s as said further above.

Or even Firemen in the UK where everyone assumes they’ve a second job, or Coppers as we all think they retire on a fat pension in their late 40’s / early 50’s.

But then most people don’t realise “you’ve never had it so good”, until it ends…

Doesn’t bother me, as I don’t fly

And you don’t eat any imported food, or buy any imported goods?

Air travel is not the problem. In terms of transport, shipping cheap goods around the world’s oceans and people holidaying on luxury liners is properly environmentally damaging. The CO2 we as individuals introduce on our annual holiday is a tiny fraction. So let’s keep things in perspective.

Well if you want to put it in perspective..
Imagine that you make one intercontinental trip per year by plane. How much energy does that cost?

A Boeing 747-400 with 240 000 litres of fuel carries 416 passengers about 8 800 miles (14 200 km). And fuel’s calorific value is 10 kWh per litre. (We learned that in Chapter 3.) So the energy cost of one full-distance round trip on such a plane, if divided equally among the passengers, is
2 × 240 000 litre/ 416 passengers× 10 kWh/litre ? 12 000 kWh per passenger

If you make one such trip per year, then your average energy consumption per day is

12 000 kWh /365 ? 33 kWh/day

14 200 km is a little further than London to Cape Town (10 000 km) and
London to Los Angeles (9000km), so I think we’ve slightly overestimated
the distance of a typical long-range intercontinental trip; but we’ve also overestimated the fullness of the plane, and the energy cost per person is more if the plane’s not full. Scaling down by 10 000 km/14 200 km to get an estimate for Cape Town, then up again by 100/80 to allow for the plane’s being 80% full, we arrive at 29 kWh per day. For ease of memorization, I’ll round this up to 30 kWh per day.
Let’s make clear what this means. Flying once per year has an energy
cost slightly bigger than leaving a 1 kW electric fire on, non-stop, 24 hours a day, all year.
Source: http://www.withouthotair.com/

Of course plenty more people fly short haul, but at least it gives a starting figure for energy consumption.

As I recall it, the nature of at least one of the spanish strikes was this:
1) ATCOs get on a contract with a decent basic salary and high overtime
2) Staffing cuts make constant long overtime a neccesity to keep the service going
3) ATCOs work a tonne of overtime and end up getting paid a lot
4) People say “ZOMG, ATCOs get paid too much, let’s cut their negotiated overtime rate, but not hire more ATCOs to cover the work, making overtime still a neccesity”
5) ATCOs say bite me

Seems like there might be people in this thread that know better than I do though? But if that’s accurate, then they’d be absolutely right to strike IMO.

best bet is to get the monkeys hooked on nicotine and withold their cigarettes if they dont work