Please find below an update on:
- Swiss Life – Cargolux Supplementary Pension Scheme
- Cargolux FRM Survey
- FSAG Partial Implementation of Recommendations
- Peer to Peer Support Program at Cargolux
Swiss Life – Cargolux Supplementary Pension Scheme
Many of you have sent us numerous reports about irregularities regarding Swiss-Life pension payments. These included reports from members that payments were late and personal contributions were withheld. On receiving an email from payroll that there was a new platform and finally the payments were being made, further investigating we found additional irregularities. This included and is not limited to such items as non-permissible (under the Luxembourg Law) unilaterally altering the contract-policy to the disadvantage of the employee.
Consulting our legal counsel where ALPL’s Pension Committee outlined the changes, a letter was sent to management informing them that if they do not address these grievances within seven days we will lodge a court proceeding. Management’s lawyer responded within the timeline by indicating that they were not aware of any disadvantage to the pilot group. They requested that we outline the grievances which is being communicated as this update is being published. If necessary in a next step our lawyer will bring the issue before a court in Luxembourg.
Management’s behaviour has clearly shown that they do not use the proper channels of social dialogue and moreover its path of cost cutting continues no matter the outcome for employees; Instead of addressing pressing issues (pilot shortage, pension payments, work and life balance, etc.) they simply brush aside any concerns voiced by their employees and only move if they are forced to. This -again- gives us an outlook of what can be expected with regards to the CWA negotiations.
Cargolux Fatigue Risk Management (FRM) Survey
It comes as no surprise that the results highlighted what all of you as members have been saying for so long. The issue is that Flight Operations management ignores the facts and uses the new EASA FTL Regulations as the planning limits to be ‘compliant’. Disregarding the overarching requirement to manage fatigue within the EASA regulations has been a concern in discussions with management and the authorities (DAC-L and EASA).
In fact, when EASA inspected Europe’s national aviation authorities in 2017/18, 75% failed the standardisation audit. It has become obvious that the burden has been placed on crew members to report unfit to fly due to the regulations not being fit for purpose in an operation such as Cargolux.
FSAG – Partial Implementation of Recommendations
At the FSAG meeting held on 13 September 2018, Flight Operations informed the stakeholders that numerous augmented flight duty periods (FDP) will be altered to reduce the long-augmented two sector operation, thereby having intermediate crew rest at destinations such as OVB and GYD. The indicated FDPs will be in effect in roster period 11 that was published on 17 September 2018.
While this is certainly welcome news after more than one year’s delay in the implementation of this recommendation which has been requested by the FSAG, it will have to be closely monitored. The reason for the scepticism is that no mechanisms have been put in place to ensure these FDP are flown as planned and not changed back to long-augmented two sector flights in the daily operation by crew control. The ALPL FSAG members have drafted a Position Paper on this process that was recently sent to the Accountable Manager, Flight Operations Management and the DAC-L.
The other recommendation that remains and will remain an enormous issue, are the FDPs that operate to and through ANC. The recommendation to limit the FDP to 10 hours has been postponed despite the fact that this is a fatigue hotspot for a standard crew.
On the positive side, we would like to thank all pilots who remain vigilant in accurately reporting fatigue retroactively and potential fatigue proactively. It is a large effort to document this information which is very necessary as you, the pilots on the line, are the real data source.
We would like to encourage you to remain vigilant and keep sending in these reports, without them change would not have occurred as management could have stated ‘there is no fatigue as there are no reports’. On this note please do report when you have had the necessity to take a rest in the cockpit that is more than 30-40 minutes. These events need to be recorded to collect the information of any additional hotspots. The data sent via an ASR/Fatigue Report remains confidential.
Peer to Peer Support Program (PSP)
We would like to congratulate the 6 colleagues that you nominated to be your peers in case you ever need the support that this program will provide. As indicated by Gunnar Steinhardt, there are additional administrative steps to be completed so that Cargolux will have a fully functioning PSP (e.g. DAC approval process). This will include that all Cargolux Pilots will be able to receive support from the 6 nominated peers in house or from any of the more than 290 trained peers within the Mayday Foundation network knowing that confidentiality will be maintained as a priority.
We ask that you remain patient while the PSP is fully implemented at Cargolux. We are working closely with management to ensure the PSP fulfils that requirements of the partnership with Mayday Foundation. For more information please view Stiftung Maydays website http://english.stiftung-mayday.de.
