Spanish Air Traffic Strike Imminent

Latest situation Aug 14th(Quoted from Typically Spanish online newspaper):

“Air Traffic Controllers and AENA sign ‘minimal agreement‘
By h.b. – Aug 14, 2010 – 9:11 AM
The President of USCA union, Camilo Cela (left), and the President of AENA, Juan Lema, shake hands after signing the deal – (Photo omitted by poster).The President of USCA union, Camilo Cela (left), and the President of AENA, Juan Lema, shake hands after signing the deal.
It ends five months of conflicts but still has to be ratified by the workers

Spanish Air Traffic Controllers and AENA, the Spanish Airport Authority, have signed the ‘minimal agreement’ which still has to be ratified by the workers assembly, and that is now not expected until next week.

The document was signed on Friday evening by Juan Lema, the President of AENA, and Camilo Ceal, President of the USCA union. It includes a wage of 200,000 € for the controllers who will have a maximum working year of 1670 hours, with shifts arranged ‘in function of the responsibility of each position’. Lower positions will have fewer working hours, down to 1,200 in some cases.

The agreement guarantees the service in airports as well as ‘social and labour peace’ and ends what have been five months of conflicts.

Development Minister, José Blanco, who is responsible for the wage cuts and restructuring of the sector, described the news of the agreement as ‘good news for everybody, especially AENA, the controllers and the tourism industry’.

AFAIK only one Spanish ATCO got that much. There is a lot of disinformation flying about on this subject.

The vast majority of them get nowhere near that amount.. Yes, they compare favourably to the rest of Europe, but I certainly wouldn’t like to be in their shoes now with only three or four days off a month and split shifts (doing 2200-0700 night shift, then back in at 1400 that same day until 2200).

Hopefully this current situation will result in legal working time limits such as we have for ATCOs in this country.

That salary has to be a typo, I don’t even think pilots would get paid that much.

Unfortunately not, as a top controller you could get 900,000€/year. As mentioned before it’s essentially down to massive overtime payments. Also, don’t forget that in Spain the public/private sector pay scheme is the opposite of that in the UK, with those in the public sector being able to have very well paid jobs for life and those in the private sector often earning peanuts.

As a little aside, even though only spaniards are allowed to be controllers for Spanish airspace several of them have English accents, in particular a guy at Madrid who sounds like a cockney!

they need someone like Reagan.

£165,000 and they are complaining? 😮

Where is my local Spanish class….

That salary has to be a typo, I don’t even think pilots would get paid that much.

The reason it is dangerous for military controllers to do the job is, they are not trained as civilian controllers which have different rules they apply. Most military work is basically VFR flight info service. Try separating two fast jets doing combat moves. The only like for like work they do is Tower controlling but they do multi runway occupancy landings and takeoffs i.e. several aircraft landing taking off at the same time from the same runway. Which is not allowed civi side. Approach is also similar but further out Radar work is basically FIS.

Also a radar rating takes 3 months of school work and someone needs to do their OJT i.e. a current valid rated civilian controller who in this case I imagine will refuse to do it. The OJT will take 180 hours or three months. So that is a lead in time of 6 months to get a military controller to do the job. These are international requirements. If the Spanish government were to ignore these and force military controllers to do the work and there was an incident there would be an awful lot of people going to prison and huge payouts to the victims families.

Half the time for a direct entry civilian controller.

By the way the Spanish do not let anyone other than Spaniards be controllers just like the U.S. .

I am a controller and YES what they are paid is disgusting they flog themselves doing overtime when in fact they are seriously understaffed. All they want to do is reduce what an individual controller earns, where as they will have to increase staff numbers to make up for the lack of controllers working. Basically equalling what they pay out in wages over the year but to more controllers. So no overall cost saving.

The controllers are unhappy at their working conditions following a 40% wage cut which has taken average pay down to 200,000 € a year, and say the strike is needed in the face of the inability shown by the Minster for Development, José Blanco, to hold talks on the matter. ……

£165,000 and they are complaining? 😮

Where is my local Spanish class….

Most air traffic controllers I’ve met over the years learned their craft in the military services,hard to see any real danger there,when the controllers went on strike in the US the strikers were replaced by a mix of military controllers,non-strikers,and supervisory personnel,flights landed and took off without hitting one another.