jan_olieslagers wrote: ↑11 May 2019, 12:48
Yes, I think that is now generally understood by all who follow the matter. It only makes André's question more poignant: What is the origin (or "source") of such "news"?
When this PC meets, there are 12 people voting the offer on the table.
- 6 from the employer side
- 6 from the employee representation side.
For the employee representation, they use old numbers of union membership where ACOD has 2 votes, VSOA has 1 and ACV has 3 votes. This is based on a company union membership count, so the administrative staff, meteo, technicians, atcos, ... are included.
For any vote to be succesfull, they need a 2/3 majority according to Belgian law, so 8/12 votes. They have 6 from the employer side at any moment, all they need is 2 more. The union votes are not changed based on the employees they are voting for, so to vote on this proposition involving 98 percent atco arrangements, ACOD keeps their 2 votes even when they represent less than 5 percent of all air traffic controllers in a union.
In 2016 ACOD had more atcos in their members when there was an offer on the table involving the change in dispo age from 55 to 58. None of the three unions wanted to accept the offer as it was, so the CEO approached ACOD outside of the official negotiations and made a back alley style deal with them: All company staff get a yearly financial bonus if he sold these 3 years for atcos. They came back in the room and signed immediately, ACV and VSOA were speechless. While it may have been a deal that would be accepted by a majority of ACOD members (non-atcos), I don't think I have to explain what a rat move this was. Most air traffic controllers that were acod member before, obviously cancelled their membership. But the damage was done, a 'correct and valid vote was held'.
After this, acod kept their 2/6 votes, surely still representing employees from different departments, but now with only an estmated 10 air traffic controllers in their members.
So in this whole matter, that has been ongoing for years, the unions now agreed (and let's say they had a lot of pressure from all sides to do so too) to not have 1 party sell off the CEOs request for a bit of gain for their members, to stay on one line and to only sign when they collectively agreed on the offer on the table.
Negotiations lasted for years and nothing came out.
Untill recently, beginning of the year when the ACV strike announcement was filed, the cracks started showing in this 'united front'. ACOD did not agree on the strike and they felt their spine bending a bit under the weight of the CEO.
De Cuyper saw he finally had the chance to force himself in there again, all he had to do was put a text on the table ACOD would accept. And he managed, twice already this year, to have a text that sells off atco rights accepted by ACOD, the last one yesterday.
Both of them don't give a damn about the demands and the rights of the atcos, they just push their agenda through in this very questionable way.
That's how you come to 'an agreement' that the actual party involved does not want and will not accept.