San Gottardo

Not saying that I disagree as I don't have any evidence that corruption is more wide-spread in the South than in Northern France (although if you look at rankings by Transparency International, you will find a north south pattern in Europe, which I'm not very surprised about and happy to make the subject of another thread).

The point that is being made is that it is much more difficult to lay off people in some of the Mediterranean stations. Which may also have to do with less alternative options on the job market for people that get laid off, so they do more kicking and screaming to hang on to their existence job. That plus a generally more militant and ferocious union leadership in those parts of the country (for which there is evidence if you look at election results in union elections) leads to the situation where restructuring has always been very difficult, and overstaffing is still prevalent.

The fact that people move around is not evidence against overstaffing. Someone may well move from Paris to Marseille and fill a job that is not required in the first place.

NickB

With due respect, that was not what was written in the referenced posts. They specifically spoke of nepotism and mafia-style practices.

In relation to your point, though, it may well be that unions might be more militant in some southern bases (although it seems to me that the difference between northern and southern stations is often wildly exaggerated and you would wonder why AF would even have attempted to develop bases de province if the environment in these was so dangerous and hostile) but, if that is so, I really do not understand the logic of focusing on southern stations. If restructuring is so much easier in CDG/ORY, why not focus there first (I take it that nobody here is suggesting that everything is tickety boo in the Parisian bases and that nothing needs to be done there)? If these fruits hang lower than those in MRS or NCE, it would make sense to reap them, especially as they are many more of them: what proportion of AF workforce is based on the CDG platform compared to MRS or NCE? Why would be the sense of going first for the few, difficult to reach fruits at the very top of the tree?

AF staff problem is not primarily located in the Southern stations. It would seem to me a displacement activity to focus on these.

stimpy

Are you really suggesting that AF and the government should take on a large war rather than a small war? War is hell and I'm sure they would be happier to take baby steps if that is indeed where they are heading. And it is low hanging fruit, nasty though it may be.

NickB

I was making two points:
1) It was suggested that it was hellishly difficult to restructure in the southern bases due to a variety of factors (workers have more to lose, more militancy, ...). If that were really so, I do not see the point of focusing on this rather than focusing on restructuring the IdF platforms. I suspect, though, that exactly the reverse is true: it will be much easier to target issues in some province bases that attacking the CDG fortress and that it probably why it is more attractive to address the former than the latter, which leads me to te second point.

2)What I was saying is that if your property is flooded due to a gaping hole in the mains pipe, replacing the washer on the cold water tap in the upstairs bathroom is hardly a priority and rather a distraction from what you should be doing. I do not think that your "baby steps" analogy works. Baby steps would be to repair the mains pipe progressively, such as putting some kind of temporary material to limit the leakage before moving to the more radical but more complicated solution of repairing or replacing the pipe itself. There is nothing wrong with replacing the washer in the tap upstairs: it has to be done at some point but it is not a "baby step" towards repairing the hole in the mains. It is just doing something else altogether and perhaps not the most urgent thing. Similarly, dealing with some local issues at stations like MRS or NCE does not begin to address AF's more fundamental problems.

San Gottardo

Yes, that is right. Indeed my post was only in response to orbitmic's one, and I didn't disagree with his observation about no evidence for the South of France to be more corrupt than the North, but then brought up an alternative explanation for why restructuring is so difficult in those stations (namely different attitudes by union leaders plus an overall more difficult job market).

1) Because the Province bases were not developed with a perspective to closing them, so union resistance wasn't something that was taken into account; and 2) they developed the Province bases with full agreement by the unions. In fact, if it hadn't been for the unions, the working conditions for Province-based crews would have been even more productive.

I do not know, but I can think of some plausible reasons:
1) Because Southern stations are more overstaffed relative to what is required. After all AF has hardly any presence left there (in fact, none other than the CDG flights), but I am sure there are many legacy structures
2) Because while wanting to shrink Air France also wants to improve its service for its CDG hub operation, which requires staff. But in CDG, not in MPL or TLN

I am quite certain that union resistance is not the only or even the determinant factor for deciding where to cut staff. And note that I did not say that they should build staff in Paris. All I am saying is that some Province stations might lose more staff in % terms than CDG.

NickB

Indeed, which suggest that, in fact, unions in those bases are perhaps not quite as militant and wild as is sometimes suggested. if unions really ruled the roost in MRS and NCE to the point of severely hampering AF management significantly more than in CDG/ORY, it would not make for AF to have developed a strategy of growing the base de province as this would have left them hostage to fortune with an additional albatross round their neck.


Sure, but, say, 300% of not a lot is still not a lot.

NickB

At the very least, this would be regarded as a transfer of undertakings within the meaning of the (EU) Transfer of Undertakings Directive, under which the employees are transferred to the new employer with their contractual rights intact and the transfer cannot be used as a reason for dismissal.
What HOP would later to decide to do with them in terms of conditions of employment is another matter.

stimpy

Right. It will be easier to deal with the province bases.

I don't think your analogy is realistic here in 2015. Maybe if they started years ago, but not now. And I think if they gain some measure of success with this current effort, it will mean something when they take on the bigger effort in Paris.

orbitmic

To be honest, when it comes to corruption levels, there are many things working better than North South! It is at best a proxy for some more important institutional and social variables and largely driven by a few highly virtuous countries notably in Scandinavia. Otherwise, some Southern countries like Austria and even Portugal do much better than some northern ones like Belgium and Poland.

I would also advise against using transparency international index as a measure of corruption as it is explicitly a corruption perception index (rather than a corruption index). It is very useful to know as such but definitely not the same thing.

I don't mean to be difficult, but I would very precisely reiterate my first point when it comes to that assertion. Where is the evidence? By and large, Southern outstations have paid a much heavier price in AF restructuring than ORY and CDG! This has notably been true of the recent heavy job cuts on ground personnel. I don't think one can have his bread and eat it: stations like MRS have seen far more job cuts than CDG or ORY because they were deemed expensive, but that sort of flatly contradicts the assertion that it is hard to fire people from there!

I very much agree with your point but again, it seems to me to go precisely against your more general point of the unions being stronger in NCE and MRS. Indeed, the Bases Province project was negotiated solely and exclusively with the national unions at a time when AF had zero flight staff based on those airports!

As for unions' attitude after that, could I just point out that for instance the NCE based crew did not strike during last year's major pilots strike even though they were among the most likely to be affected by the decisions that AF was proposing.

But the big change of late is admission by AF that half of its long haul routes are losing money! There are no long haul AF flights from NCE or AJA! As for short/medium haul, it is not too clear to me why they would more heavily target MRS/NCE/TLS crew either as those are significantly more productive than their CDG/ORY counterparts and operate the exact same routes (in other words, you may well have flown with some NCE based crew on a CDG-TXL flight as their rotation may well have been NCE-CDG-TXL-CDG-AMS-CDG-NCE-NAP-NCE, and they will have done that with a productivity 20% higher than the same route by a CDG-based crew).

Fully agree with both points. Again, it seems to me that existing evidence from the various recent plans shows that it has been much easier for AF to get rid of outstation-based staff. By contrast, the airline has been completely incapable to impose any workforce restructuring to its Paris-based crews. As you say, I suspect that primary focus on further NCE or MRS contraction is precisely due to the fact that those crew are less protected by unions and therefore easier to get rid of rather than the other way round, but it also means that AF are getting rid of their more productive staff and left with the ones who have made absolutely no productivity effort in recent years so that AF is merely trying to negotiate with them to get... close to the productivity levels their (soon to be former) bases colleagues have achieved for several years, whilst bribing them with ridiculous promises of opening more routes, etc.

As for your second point, I couldn't agree more. I think that AF "tourne autour du pot" by focusing on those while letting the mains pipe lose water by the gallon...

San Gottardo

I am a bit scratching my head why there is so much discussion about AF making some cuts to its staffing levels in the Province stations. I guess I just missed the beginning of that discussion. Isn't this merely the result of AF mainline having withdrawn almost all of its services from airports other than CDG (and some bits lefgt at ORY) and so not requiring the staff there any longer? They probably had wanted to get rid of staff there since some time, and now, in the context of an overall reduction of staff is a good context (or pretext) to do that overdue reduction? In terms of absolute EUR lost, surely Paris is much bigger drain (it's the "main pipe" in NickB's example), but in relative terms compared to what is really needed for the little AF has left in the Province staffing levels are more "out of whack" in the Province stations, simply because they haven't been reduced yet. So what is the actual issue that we are debating?

About the special situation of MRS and Corsica: let's for the sake of argument distinguish two things, one is the ground crew and the other is flying personnel based there. From what I could gather so far - and I am happy to correct my perspective in the light of more comprehensive data/information than I have so far myself - the reduction of flying personnel is not the issue. The issue seems to be ground staff, where we keep on hearing about more resistence to change from Corsica and Marseille than from, say, Toulouse (that has also lost BdP flights) or Strasbourg or Rennes. The reason why there is more kicking and screaming from staff at MRS/Corsica could be because that is where there was more overstaffing and hence previous attempts to reduce staff, which then lead to kicking and streaming - whilst other stations did not have any reasons for resistence because there was less or no initiative to reduce staffing levels. Or it could be that MRS and Corsica have more vociferous union leaders, or more vociferous staff. I'd love to see more evidence to figure out which reason is more true than the other or what other reasons there could be. It is a fact that Northern union leaders can be just as much opposing change as Southern ones (dockers in Calais, Le Havre or Dunkirque are just as militant as the ones in Marseille I believe), but then again, as mentioned, whenever we hear of AF wanting to change things, we hear stories from Marseille but not from Nantes or Bordeaux. Why is that?

brunos

French geography dictates that all major regional airports are in the South of France (Paris being in the North). LYS might be the exception. I do not know how many AF staff are based in BOD, TLN, MRS, TLN, NCE but it has to be significant for AF.

There are several kinds of AF employees: pilots, FAs, airport personnel, administrative staff, etc.. The "base de province" concept has been a failure and the treatment of those flying crews is a specific issue. But ground personnel is plethoric at regional airports. When we are talking about layoffs at regional airports, we are not talking about aircraft crews but about ground personnel.

I am only (very) familiar with NCE and my personal observation is that the number of idle/chatting/walking AF staff is just impressive. Sure, that is only my personal observation, but many articles and AF sources/friends have long claimed the same.
Even if the number were appropriate five years ago, there have been many changes in the past few years. European flights from these airports have been discontinued. Check-in kiosks have been installed everywhere and it will be generalized also for bags. HOP is replacing AF, and supposedly with a lower cost/service structure (including at check-in). These changes dictate a drastic reduction in airport personnel.
I fully agree with San Gottardo that the current AF transformation require a much more significant downsizing at Southern airports than at CDG. This is hardly a "little" war. ORY will be another "big" war for ground personnel and it will also come or the AF group has no chance of survival.

bodory

Voilà :

http://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-ser...ce-1162308.php

bodory

A full flight does not necessarily mean a profitable flight for various reasons:
- on the revenue side : wrong yield management
- on the cost side : cost structure of the route

Also, AF is notorious for having higher costs than its competitors, notably because of its numerous ground agents, meaning these costs are allocated to all routes, making some of them non profitable.

Let's a fictitious but very simplified example on the US-Europe-Bangalore route, assuming yield management made an appropriate job:
- pax are ready to pay an average 1500 USD to fly r/t in Y
- AF aligned its pricing with BA, LH and others
- demand is high, price is good, thus planes are full
- but AF (i) sent its own people to manage ground operations at BLR whereas BA is subcontracting with locals
- AF has too many ground agents in CDG, making the stop more expensive there than in FRA
- and AF pilots are paid more than LH ones

Either AF raised its price but is likely to empty their aircrafts : not a good option when you know most costs are fixed ones (fuel, crew, aircraft lease/depreciation) ; or you keep your pricing but you may end up loosing money after cost allocation.

In reality it is much more complicated because there is O/D demand, AF is also subcontracting, pricing is not aligned with competition etc...

ian001

Violent scenes at AF HQ following an apparent invasion of a meeting, with two executives leaving the premises without their shirts:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...b06bd936f9cdf9

Andy49

[QUOTE=ian001;25519384]Violent scenes at AF HQ following an apparent invasion of a meeting, with two executives leaving the premises without their shirts: