WARNING - This is a full on rage post with a nice full-bodied fruity whine and not for those of a delicate disposition, especially those working in the airport industry....
This month the staff at Icelandic airports are holding a series of mini-strikes from 4am to 9am. These have been delaying flights into and out of Iceland. Information is a nightmare to get hold of, but from what I've been able to gather is that negotiations have broken down last Thursday and the mini-strikes will continue.... until they go 'balls deep' on the 30th April with a full "General Strike". I wonder if the Iceland press are trying to keep things quiet as this could seriously harm the tourist industry on which, along with CCP, funds their country. The airport closing down in the first week of the peek tourist season is certain to give people the jitters and many could change their holiday plans. In fact I cannot even find the reasons for the strike other than "low job satisfaction". Information is really hard to come by.
Iceland Review states:-
- The strikes will run from 4 am to 9 am on April 8, 23, 25 and 30, with the final strike lasting longer if a deal is not reached.
Now I wonder which day is one of the busiest of the year for that airport? What day do hundreds and hundreds of geeks swarm to Iceland? Yeah, the Wednesday before Eve Online Fanfest kicks off on the Thursday. Which just happens to be the 30th of April this year. The day they will start a general strike at the airport if negotiations don't stop it before. This is copied from the Reykjavik Grapevine:-
Félag Flugmálastarfsmanna Ríkisins (FFR) Union Head Kristján Jóhannsson expects the strike will paralyse Iceland’s airports.
“[The strike] will, if it comes to pass, we still have time to negotiate, but if it comes to pass it will have the consequence that flights will come to a halt,” said Kristján. “They will not land and they will not take off, both in Keflavík and elsewhere in the country. So all operations will be paralysed and everything will stop.”
Nice. Bloody fantastic guys.
Rage building....... approaching critical mass......
Low job satisfaction have we? Oh didums. Poor wittle airport workers.
Step away from the keyboard Drackarn......
TOO LATE! LOOK OUT! ITS MR ANGRY!
THANKS TO THE GLOBAL RECESSION, WHICH ICELAND IS CERTAINLY NOT 100% BLAME FREE FROM, I HAVE BEEN PUT AT RISK OF REDUNDANCY TWICE, MADE REDUNDANT ONCE, HAD TO WORK MONTHS ON A 4-DAY WEEK WITH A PRO-RATED PAY CUT AND FINALLY HAD TO MOVE OUT TO THE BLOODY DESERT TO KEEP IN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT. I HAVE NOT HAD A PAY-RISE IN YEARS WHILST THE COST OF LIVING HAS GONE UP SO I'VE HAD YEARS OF PAY CUTS! THEN YESTERDAY I HAD TO SPUNK 400 QUID ON LOSING A PREPAID HOTEL ROOM, CHANGING MY FLIGHTS AND GETTING AN EXTRA NIGHT IN A ICELANDIC HOTEL ROOM BECAUSE YOU HAVE LOW JOB SATISFACTION. ****** ********* ****. ******** ********* ******* ********* ******** *********** *********. *********!
Sorry. Under a lot of pressure and very stressed. Oh, and very, very, very mad bro! I retracted the last couple of lines on advice from a fellow Eve player I asked to proof read. Please feel free to guess what I might have said originally!
Iceland Review states:-
- The strikes will run from 4 am to 9 am on April 8, 23, 25 and 30, with the final strike lasting longer if a deal is not reached.
Now I wonder which day is one of the busiest of the year for that airport? What day do hundreds and hundreds of geeks swarm to Iceland? Yeah, the Wednesday before Eve Online Fanfest kicks off on the Thursday. Which just happens to be the 30th of April this year. The day they will start a general strike at the airport if negotiations don't stop it before. This is copied from the Reykjavik Grapevine:-
Félag Flugmálastarfsmanna Ríkisins (FFR) Union Head Kristján Jóhannsson expects the strike will paralyse Iceland’s airports.
“[The strike] will, if it comes to pass, we still have time to negotiate, but if it comes to pass it will have the consequence that flights will come to a halt,” said Kristján. “They will not land and they will not take off, both in Keflavík and elsewhere in the country. So all operations will be paralysed and everything will stop.”
Nice. Bloody fantastic guys.
Low job satisfaction have we? Oh didums. Poor wittle airport workers.
Step away from the keyboard Drackarn......
TOO LATE! LOOK OUT! ITS MR ANGRY!
THANKS TO THE GLOBAL RECESSION, WHICH ICELAND IS CERTAINLY NOT 100% BLAME FREE FROM, I HAVE BEEN PUT AT RISK OF REDUNDANCY TWICE, MADE REDUNDANT ONCE, HAD TO WORK MONTHS ON A 4-DAY WEEK WITH A PRO-RATED PAY CUT AND FINALLY HAD TO MOVE OUT TO THE BLOODY DESERT TO KEEP IN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT. I HAVE NOT HAD A PAY-RISE IN YEARS WHILST THE COST OF LIVING HAS GONE UP SO I'VE HAD YEARS OF PAY CUTS! THEN YESTERDAY I HAD TO SPUNK 400 QUID ON LOSING A PREPAID HOTEL ROOM, CHANGING MY FLIGHTS AND GETTING AN EXTRA NIGHT IN A ICELANDIC HOTEL ROOM BECAUSE YOU HAVE LOW JOB SATISFACTION. ****** ********* ****. ******** ********* ******* ********* ******** *********** *********. *********!
Feeling the love Mate. Feeling the love.......
ReplyDeleteHeh - It's a sympathy strike in support of EVE's HS and LS industrialists.
ReplyDeleteSo the airline workers are doing an interdiction of the airport, messing up your highest form of meta gameplay, which is going to Fanfest. Gee, I feel terrible for you. I wonder if this airport interdiction is sponsored by goons?
ReplyDeleteOh, and as for Iceland being responsible for the disaster of the 2008 global meltdown, you actually did some reading, you might find out it was created by those fun-loving boys on Wall Street. Iceland was damn near wiped out by the ponzi schemes those guys ran.
And also, it is called market forces at play. Market forces go both ways, and labour is demonstrating that two-way flow of power. These guys clearly have the right to strike, as they should, and are exercising that right, gaining maximum leverage. Good for them.
You can't argue a "right to strike" under some grand level of equality unless the airports have the right to sack everyone and bring in new workers. In most countries, law prevents that sort of action. Can the employer deny them pay or benefits? No. Can they sack them all? No. Can they allow a strike to negatively impact the union's bargaining position? No. "Fair share" has nothing to do with this.
DeleteUnions were absolutely necessary in 1900. They fought back - righteously - against abusive and unsafe working environments. These days, unions - which are legally protected from market forces - offer better wages and benefits than 90% of jobs out there. They're no longer fighting for equality, they're fighting for preferential status.
Also, didn't I read somewhere that these folks were a governmental union? Tell me how it's appropriate or right for government workers to deny a public utility to the public.
No sympathy here. Do your jobs or find a new one.
I feel your pain... I'm in IT (go figure huh?) and currently between contracts... I 'almost' went to FF this year... now I am wondering if I mebbe dodged a lazer bean by not...
ReplyDeleteLook, I certainly hope they get it all figured out before FF... it would be a real black mark for Iceland if they didn't, and a blue-balled bich for the fans and CCP.
which side are you on boys, which side are you on?
ReplyDeleteIt's totally appropriate to be angry at people you don't know for something you admittedly know nothing about, in a country not your own, involving issues you're unaware of, and labor relations in a country just coming out of a major recession caused by the most pernicious type of venal, capitalistic greed one can imagine. Totally appropriate. Your visit to a conference center where you can watch powerpoints about space pixels and drink overpriced liqour in overcrowded bars is much, much more important.
ReplyDeletePerspective. Get some.
IMO it is dumb as hell to work somewhere that sucks, doesn't pay enough and generally makes you feel like shit. If you cant handle stuff inside the company, go work for someone else.
DeleteIt will fuck up things even worse for a bit, but once the company lead realizes, there is no more money they have to figure out their stuff.
I personally know few people who have done exactly this, they said that their job sucks, were told to switch company, suddenly they get better offer from their original company.
The company isn't worth working in if you cant go to your boss and say that they should improve something.
Iceland has 300k people. There aren't many places to work. Go play American politics somewhere else.
DeleteIt's a pay dispute. The collective bargaining agreement has expired. Their safety/support staff (firemen, rescue, etc) form the core of the strike. The April 30th strike will include sister unions of other groups tied to the airport's functions. In a sense, CCP is a victim of it's own Icelandic success. There aren't a lot of bargaining chips in a country so small. Putting the breaks on one of the few major foreign cash infusions is basically the only way to get the Icelandic government to exert the pressure necessary to get the airline/airport to the bargaining table. Keep in mind that Iceland's salaries, etc. have been on hold for years now. As you yourself well know (in all caps), pay has been frozen for quite some time. Getting off your island to find work is a lot easier than getting off theirs. N'est-ce pas?
ReplyDeleteActually, the workers have stated they are striking against the government, not Icelandair.
DeleteThe airport is run by a state-owned company. The sister unions include employees of Icelandair.
DeleteFirst world problems.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you're going to be in the UK anyway and Iceland won't let you in, you might as well come to the next best thing - https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=333947
ReplyDelete/me ducks, covers then covers again!
Iceland's responsibility for the financial crisis? I almost fell off my chair laughing.
ReplyDeleteAs for the strikes? Some folks with a really bad deal decided to try and get a better deal for themselves and resorted to doing so by giving up their pay (after having tried negotiating first). Meh. It inconveniences you, yes, but it'd be a pretty damn pointless strike if it didn't inconvenience you. The whole point of a strike is to cause disruption. Ideally, the choice of timing and action maximizes disruption whilst minimizing the amount of time off for the folks striking (to minimize their losses). That's the way strikes work.
As for labour negotiations it's a pretty predictable cycle too - management squeeze as much as they can. At some point they squeeze too much and negotiations get tense. If the negotiations work then everything calms down and we're back into the cycle, if they fail then there's industrial action until a) management concede and tensions drop, b) the staff get fatigued enough to stop. Either way, expectations are reset and the cycle restarts. There's nothing unusual about this instance, other than it happens to coincide with folks who fly virtual spaceships wanting to use the disrupted services.
Sigh. Wish people would re-read before commenting.
ReplyDeleteFirst the recession - The words used were "100% blame free from". At no point did I say the Iceland banking system caused the global recession, of course they didn't. However, they certainly helped to make it worse in that region. They took the same gambles as the American banking system did (and to be fair most of the world to some extent) but the Iceland banks bet the house on the bubble not bursting. When America did burst the bubble, then the collapse of the Icelandic banking system hurt the region significantly. Billions were invested in Iceland's banks. Then again I'm sure people could argue who is to blame here? The Icelandic banks that were offering those huge and unsustainable interest rates, or the foreign governments and investment funds who were daft enough to see the very high rates and think there was no risk.
Now the strikes - Basically the strikes are the same as what is about to happen in London with the Underground. I feel exactly the same about them. It is simply "Give us what we want or we'll hurt innocent people, Mr Government." (I never mentioned Iceland Air as they have nothing to do with this). This is something transport workers hold over people. The girl in your local cafe serving your coffee and bacon. When did she last get a pay rise? Has she got good job satisfaction? Has she got a good wage? Should she strike? Yeah, not going to happen is it.
The "Give us what we want or we'll hurt innocent people" really grinds my gears. During the worst years, things were bad for me personally. Really bad. So bad I ended up having to move 3,500 miles from green and pleasant England to the middle of the desert. So yeah, even reading these comments, I still have no sympathy for people who will hurt others just to get a payrise. Think of the families and people who might have their holidays ruined, just because a group wants a payrise. Is that really right? I find it totally selfish, but that might just be me!
Trust Dinsdale to attach this to goons somehow. A first world problem indeed. There's no difference between organized labor and major corporations except that labor feigns victimhood better. Lookt at theUS education system where teachers (mostly only in education because its easy) strike, holding the future of adolescents hostage, demanding raises that suck up over 80% of education budgets, then whine that they have to lay for supplies from their own pockets, demanding yet more taxes and raises!
ReplyDeleteAnyone that thinks its all the fault of Wall Street or the government is a fool. There's blame for everyone, right down to aid workers shoveling money into shitholes thereby shoring up failing societies.